Business Intelligence – What Are the Warning Signs that you need it?

Do you have insight into what processes are working correctly and which need improvement in your organization? How do you identify potential problem areas in a timely matter so that positive action can be taken? Business Intelligence (BI) allows you to analyze and better understand what your plans should be in order to get successful results. Finding out how BI can keep your company ahead of the curve and choosing the right BI vendor becomes increasingly important as you continue on a path of growth.

You want to streamline operations, capture new customers, increase your revenue, and become more profitable. In order to outpace your competition, you need to find new ways to improve your operational efficiencies. How do you spend more time on predicting and planning for the success of your future? You need to be able to focus on quickly finding and resolving potential issues as well as taking advantage of new opportunities. Because you don’t have the ability to check every little detail during the process, you need new ways to be alerted to potential issues. By aligning your departmental metrics with your strategic vision, BI can provide you with the tools to do so.

How do you know whether or not you would benefit from a strong BI solution? The following are a few of the signs that you could definitely benefit from BI:

• Multiple versions of the truth – If you are working from multiple spreadsheets with incorrect figures, chances are your analysis will be faulty and problems will arise between various departments throughout your company.
• Can’t perform in-depth analysis – With faulty data, your organization has no insight into which departments have the greatest sales volume and other success metrics like which products have the highest sales by season.
• Limited operational flexibility – As your customer base continues to grow, how do you recognize which of these customers are most valuable – who provides you with the most sales each month? Who do you want to give special attention and incentives to? Without the ability to perform such analysis, your best customers may turn to a competitor for business.
• Inability to quickly react – Without insight into better business practices, you may end up with a dissatisfied customer. The potential for this customer to voice their dissatisfaction through social networks like Twitter is high. If you lack the resources to monitor your social networks, you can’t quickly react to this issue and you are left with negative feedback that has gone viral. BI provides you with the ability to have close watch and determine when potential issues may arise.

These are just a few of many warning signs you may experience that could contribute to a need for a Business Intelligence solution. Stay tuned for next week’s blog that will explore Business Intelligence in depth and how it can help your organization. Contact Third Wave today to discuss further!