Better BI

In order for a company to grow efficiently and profitably, it needs to be organized and have accurate, useful, and timely information. Management needs to know things like, where is the company making money? Where is the company losing money? How are supply chain performances? What product lines and company sectors are doing well? What customer base is growing? Etc. BI or business intelligence helps address the challenge of keeping everyone informed, by delivering timely and useful information.

The following is a look at how to improve visibility in your business, and improve business intelligence.

First, you have to understand exactly why you should practice BI-
BI helps you see detail about the company, from sales broken down by product or channel, who your biggest customer is, what your best selling product or service is, and more.

BI helps in your effort to create management information. It can help get management information out to all the different teams of people operating a business.

BI can help improve spreadsheets, and help them make sense. They lead to better interpretation of data, and less inaccuracy.

BI also helps you prioritize problems, and recognize opportunities. It provides insight into how the business is performing, and what can be tweaked to better align resources with priorities.

Next it is important to know the pitfalls, as business intelligence projects have been known to be both costly and prone to failure.

Reporting can be costly, sometimes goes unused, and often is not well implemented. If you can address these challenges, you can use BI to improve your business. Better BI means dealing with the upfront investment costs, and having the right people in place to implement your BI.If you want better BI it might help to hire an outside company to help you deal with the challenges.

Most companies do not have the capital needed for an ongoing BI project, the cost of equipment, staffing, and upkeep can be extremely high. However, if you hire a BI company, those costs are not carried by you. In addition, much of the reporting and implementation requires a specific skill set or knowledge, and you may not have the staff members to properly interpret data and access the data needed to make informed decisions. A BI company is going to specialize in this, and thus will have qualified staff to implement the project.

BI is going to help you make better, more informed decisions. Investing in a decent BI project, using a third party, can be a great way to evaluate your business, make informed decisions, and improve your business in general. Reports will no longer be wasted or overlooked, but instead, will be utilized to grow your market share, and better address your market needs, produce new products that take advantage of market opportunities, and drop products that are not helping further your business.