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Get more out of your business intelligence solutions

Posted by Kevin O'Callaghan on 5-Oct-2009 - Filed under: Cost Reduction, IT Consulting , also relevant to: business analysis, business intelligence, data warehouse, database, reporting - 2 Comments

With the recession biting into budgets, the use of information within a company can be critical to either plodding along keeping your head above water or plotting a direct course to success when others flail around.

In an earlier post on business intelligence, I set out a list of reasons why business intelligence – as part of your companies business analysis – can help gain a competitive advantage and aid in understanding where your business is going.

This time around, I’m going to focus on some options on how you can get more out of a business intelligence solution. If you’re thinking that’s all well and good, but you don’t have a business intelligence solution, read on, chances are that there are pieces discussed below that you have implemented in some form already. In essence, if you relay on data from different parts of your organisation and yet may not be relating all that to your overall business, then you’ve got the beginnings of a business intelligence solution.

So it’s time to get thinking about your business and I’m going to ask questions along the way to get you thinking about your current business intelligence solution. I’ll use a few examples, but where possible always try to relate these questions to your own scenario. And if you can’t feel free to get in touch!

1. Do you use many applications and data warehouses?

Many organisations utilise an array of software applications, databases or data warehouses to help them understand how their organisation is performing. Frequently, companies and organisations tend to have more than one B.I. solution with different departments running different applications and all likely to be getting the same results or reports. If this is true of your organisation, perhaps it’s time to realise what you use and what you need and decide to consolidate those applications. Question yourself on whether you want your accounts department and sales department to use two (or more) different applications to gather the same data result?

Aside from software applications, there’s where you store your data. Does your organisation store the same data in many different repositories? Do you have five data warehouses that all contain the same data? Can you consolidate that data to perhaps two data warehouses? It’s worth a thought – not only are you saving on storage space, but you could also be saving on running costs as well.

Don’t forget to look at your existing software – determine whether the applications you use to gather and analyse data are out of date and can be replaced by an integrated all-in-one solution, or even better, whether you’re entitled to a free upgrade!

2. Can you get more data – but be clever about it?

Yes, get more data. But not the same data you have already. A good intelligence solution will always seek more data, provided it’s relevant to the organisation. Having scaled down your data warehouse and removed duplicate data, you may have some space to add more. Is it worthwhile to have some data on your competitor’s sales and analyse a like-for-like comparison against your own?

If not competitors, perhaps there are other areas of the business that can be added to your existing data. For example, it may be important to know how your business performs against special incentives being run and track like-for-like performance on those incentives if they occur at different intervals during your financial year? Do you want to break down your data between regions, countries or even cities?

3. Will you get the business involved?

Your business intelligence is only as strong as the people that rely on it. They are the people that understand how their part of the organisation should work, identify when things go wrong and define how their part of the organisation performs. Having a representative from all relevant aspects of your organisation be part of your business intelligence solution aids in agreed business rules and adds a layer of trust to the data being produced.

Once your stakeholders are in place, get them to draw up a process for their own section releative to your business intelligence solution. Ensure all are aligned. Once done, make sure your stakeholders agree on their processes and where suitable, update those processes into one over process for the company. Get the flow of information unified and together, keep those who rely on the data involved.

It’s not enough to hand over an intelligence solution to your IT department and let it take its course, your business stakeholders must be involved throughout. It’s simple, when your staff trusts the data then you know that it is reliable data.

4. Are you thinking outside the box?

Sometimes looking at other aspects of the organisation can aid in improving performance overall. If you’re a sales organisation are you tracking your staff performance with your sales data? Can you tell whether more can be achieved from your staff? If an employee sells 10k of product does that make him employee of the month? Or can your business intelligence solution identify his 2 hour cumulative breaks during the day and relate that to sales performance? Can you get more out of your employee than before – are you setting realistic targets for your sales staff?

Likewise, for call centres – you may be tracking calls and the nature of those calls, but are you also tracking the number of times your agents may need to call back to a client. Are you using intelligence to highlight how many of your staff are calling back more customers than others?  Perhaps, your intelligence system needs to track your agents training history? If they’re calling more customers back maybe it’s time to revisit training opportunities and improve your call standards even more.

I hope that some of these questions will help in improving your business intelligence solution. By asking them, you may ultimately end up saving money and have a more streamlined business in place. Needless to say, understanding your business is essential and by asking these questions you may start down that road to further success.

Via Consulting offer organisations a free consultation on their business intelligence requirements, if you would like to learn more, please click here to contact us.