Are you sitting on top of valuable insights hidden in your data? Today we’re sharing six of the most common signs we’ve observed your business needs a BI solution.
We are living in an information-rich world. Every day we have the capacity to create and store more and more data. But as with most things, it’s not always the size but the quality that counts. Without the ability to organise and interpret your data you could be missing out on key information to improve your business operations.
Below we share six of the most common signs we’ve observed that your business needs a Business Intelligence (BI) solution:
1. You are too reliant on excel
Excel has been the go-to data collection tool for as long as we can remember. It’s flexible, searchable, and easy to use. However, as a business grows and requires more sophisticated analysis it soon starts to show it’s limits. One of the key problems being; if multiple people are making manual edits to the same file and sharing it with colleagues you risk losing track of changes and accuracy. This is a problem easily solved by a BI tool that allows multiple logins to access the same information which gives your organisation “one version of the truth”.
2. You are overwhelmed by the amount of data available
If your business is continuously creating mounds of paperwork and data that keeps growing at an ever increasing pace, then you’re most likely in need of a BI tool such as Yellowfin BI, Qlik View, Qlik Sense, Tableau or Power BI. Having lots of data is no good to anyone if you don’t have an efficient and immediate way to analyse it, identify problems and act on business insights.
3. You have multiple sources of data to combine
Do you have numerous staff spending countless hours manually going through multiple sources to combine information and create reports? The problem with this is joining that data together can be time-consuming and subject to error. A BI tool will give you an efficient and centralised way to extract, analyse and present your data accurately. Say goodbye to wasting time and resources and driving your staff mad.
4. You are spending too much time manually creating reports
Creating and sharing reports is an important part of any business’s function as it enables you to reflect and make better decisions to improve and grow. However, how often have you felt you’ve spent most of your time creating reports and presentations rather than getting the actual job done? With a BI tool such as Yellowfin BI, all the work is done for you and your reports are ready to roll in minutes from anywhere giving you an up-to-the-minute understanding of where your business operations stand.
5. You don’t have the information you need to make decisions in a timely fashion
Whether or not you consider yourself to have a good business brain; if your decisions are not backed by accurate and timely data you are probably making decisions by taking an uneducated guess. Sometimes they pay off and sometimes they don’t. A dynamic BI tool can arm you with information that allows you to analyse your data by comparing, drilling and filtering information in real time. Now, that’s a way to be confident in your decision making.
6. You know there are opportunities out there if you can get your data under control
Probably the clearest sign that you need a BI solution is recognising the un-tapped value of your data and the insights and opportunities that it contains. Having a BI consultant come and work with you to adopt better BI practices can produce positive effects in your business almost immediately, and allow you to take the prized upper hand.
