As executives running business, we can spend hours (or have our employees spend hours) chasing information to create the reports that we need to make the informed decisions that keep our businesses running and successful. One of the cool things about technology today, is that we have produced ways to streamline these reports to almost eradicate that daily labor and have the reports (and information tied to them) constantly at our fingertips. Simply put, this is called Business Intelligence. And I call it… Cool as crap!
So, what is Business Intelligence (or BI)? BI is gathering technological information and presenting it in a way that’s useful and dynamic.
BI is not new, and companies have used it for years to create charts and graphs to keep an eye on limited information. What’s different now is that we can actually mine the data from your company software, put it in a centralized location and create both drillable and actionable up-to-the-minute reports on the information that is most important to you.
Example:
We worked with a client recently who had an employee that spent 2 ½ hours a day putting together a daily sales report. By using Business Intelligence, we were able to create a live report to have the same information always immediately available to our client. Thanks to BI, our client is able to save 600 labor hours a year, and at $10/hr (conservatively speaking), that’s $6,000 in a year.
Business Intelligence can centralize information from all types of systems including:
- Accounting software (Like Microsoft Dynamics GP, Peachtree, QuickBooks, JD Edwards, etc)
- Customer Relationship software (Like Microsoft Dynamics CRM or Salesforce)
- Line of Business Application (Manufacturing software or whatever proprietary software you use to run your daily operations)
What makes this exciting is that before, you had to purchase special software to display the information in a particular dashboard or system. Now, we are able to centralize these reports in the place that helps you the most.
Here are some of the ways we can centralize data:
Websites (including internal websites like SharePoint)- Business Dashboards (such as in GP 2010)
- Excel files using PowerPivot (Yes… we can have up-to-date live information available in an Excel format with charts and graphics.)
- SQL Reporting Services
Ask yourself. How much time is being wasted by your top managers chasing, crunching, or sharing information? What if you could free an additional 4-6 weeks a year for these key people to focus on new initiatives? Business Intelligence can help take your organization to the next level by having critical, just-in-time information at teams’ fingertips.” Or, in my own words, you could simply say it’s “cool as crap!”
