Software tools have advanced to the point that almost anyone can access Business Intelligence and perform at least basic analysis within their organization. Small and medium-sized businesses have access to data that just ten years ago was available only to the largest and most profitable companies. Now that BI is no longer a luxury only the richest can afford, companies are seeing varying results from their BI efforts. Why do some businesses seem to be getting more from their BI efforts than others? The reasons are as varied as the companies themselves.
Here are 2 ways your business can maximize the value of your BI.
Spread it across your whole team
This information shouldn’t be a secret shared only in the boardroom. One of the most powerful things about having well-analyzed data is that it allows managers to share the metrics that are important to their whole team. When you give an employee a clear benchmark they have a way better chance of improving and are able to focus on the exact area where improvement is needed. The value of the data you have is directly proportional to the number of people in your organization that understand it.
Automate
BI is only as good as the data behind it. Many businesses resort to manual processes to meet this need, manually extracting data into Excel and preparing it for reporting can be extremely time-consuming. This process not only wastes time, it leads to data errors. A company cannot have full faith and confidence in data that was gathered manually. You must automate your data collection wherever possible and normalize it within a data warehouse and through the use of an ETL tool, this will save time and reduce errors in your data.