Organizations grappling with separate and distinct systems like ERP, CRM or other enterprise data sources, face inaccuracies, data redundancies and data over burden – all resulting in critical obstacles to business success.
- Data is scattered and buried within various data sources, preventing accurate business monitoring and management.
- Reports from separate systems are static and inflexible, so analytics are inaccessible across the organization.
- Data level security is nearly non-existent in some reporting systems and restrictive in others, making it impossible to achieve comprehensive data integration and presentation.
- Reports must often be designed by IT staff or analysts creating decision delays and resulting in incomplete, out-of-date and inaccurate information.
- Users rely on old tools and techniques like spreadsheets and inflexible, custom reporting.
- The corporate culture is driven by guesswork and opinions rather than objective metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs).
- Staff accountability and empowerment is non-existent.
The evolution of Business Intelligence Tools has enabled true business assessment and performance-driven business management, by providing clear, concise results using data and information integrated from various sources and presented in a way that clearly illustrates patterns, trends, problems and opportunities. Using custom designed metrics and measurements, executives and business users can manage the business objectively with insight into the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) exception alerts, threshold analysis and valuable forecasting and impact and sensitivity tools to test assumptions and ensure that the enterprise does not make a misstep when planning for future results, price increases, new products, etc.
However, it is not enough to merely recognize the need for business intelligence. In order to optimize business results and decisions, an enterprise must carefully choose its business intelligence tool with a full understanding of its business requirements and the capabilities of the BI solution.
Data contained in ‘silo’ systems like ERP, CRM, HR, inventory and shipping systems, accounting and financial system or other enterprise data repositories is not helpful to the organization if it is not integrated and made accessible in a way that is meaningful to the user. Every enterprise needs current, concise data to recognize trends and problems and analyze the root cause of issues, the results by department, division, team or individual and other parameters and metrics.
With the right Business Intelligence tool, every organization can improve productivity, communication, customer satisfaction and competitive advantage and the business can dismiss gut feelings, guesswork and opinion in favor of clear, concise strategic, operational and tactical decisions.
An enterprise that acquires a mobile, practical, affordable business intelligence solution with personalized dashboards, forecasting and predictive analysis, balanced scorecards, key performance indicators, and fast implementation, training and user adoption can quickly achieve ROI and keep TCO low. Moreover, that enterprise will enjoy improved business results, customer and user satisfaction and a competitive advantage with performance driven results and growth.
