Signs Your Company Needs BI
Numerous enterprises have invested in applications like ERP, CRM, SCM, HRM, etc. to automate the business transactions and processes of their operations. On the basis of their Business needs in their Industry, organisations implement such solutions (SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Siebel, Microsoft Navision, QAD MFG/PRO, RAMCO, Tally, etc.). The results through such implementations might be excellent from a transaction management point of view, driving down the traditional costs of managing daily business operations. These companies can now look to their investment in transaction applications and the data captured as an asset to support performance management initiatives.
For data output from these systems, organizations use any or all of the following:
• Standard reports available as part of the application system
• Generate non-standard reports using the tools available along with the application system
• Analyze & Manipulate data by exporting the same to excel
• Implement Data Warehouse for BI and data analysis for the senior management
Each of these aspects, have the following constraints & limitations:
• Standard reports are essentially static and hence no data analysis is possible
• Generating non-standard reports requires dependency on a third party vendor or maintaining costly proprietary skills
• Excel is not a secure, enterprise-wide BI and data analysis tool. No control over data manipulation, data security, data transparency…
• Heavy investments are required in Data Warehouse creation, training, data consolidation etc… with data analysis not possible on real-time basis
Business intelligence (BI) has found its place in CIO’s top priority list for a reason: Information is growing at an exponential rate. As information grows, the need for organizations to manage it and make it actionable grows as well. Getting that information in a timely manner—and to the right people in the right places, throughout an organization—is an important means to enterprise success.
Many businesses are using Traditional BI tools to cater to their reporting and analytics needs. But still such organizations are looking for a better analytics.
Do any of the following sound familiar to you?
• Do you have to ask IT to create each new reports for you? The lag time from the report request to reports available makes the reports stale the minute they came out.
• Are you spending too much time in collecting data and creating report manually for analysis rather than taking decisions?
• Are staff having limited access to information, or have different numbers from Excel spreadsheets?
• Does top management want enterprise-wide view reports with built in key performance indicators and dashboard?
• Do your end-user want better ways to present reports graphically with drill-down capabilities and drag-and-drop formatting?
• Do your users have to run multiple queries to produce a single report?
• Would you like to able to give end user these capabilities without compromising on security risks and performance degradation?
• Are you sure where did the number come from? Does everyone in your organization has a single version of truth?
• Do you work on islands of information systems, with disparate data sources and systems which work well by themselves and are not designed to work together?
• Is information treated like CASH, where its value diminishes with time, unless exploited?
Signs You Need better Analytics:
• You’re forced to make important decisions based on gut-feel and anecdotes, instead of accurate current and historical data
• You’re not 100% clear on what to focus on and where to intervene to hit your number this quarter
o What industries are strong? How does this compare to last year?
o What’s working? What’s not working? What are the trends?
o Which reps push the most? Where should we invest?
• You can’t tell which deals are getting stuck in your pipeline and why?
• You dread being asked by investors, “How big does your pipeline need to be to hit your number this quarter?”
• You’re struggling to analyze sales trends and track opportunities over time in monster excel spreadsheets
Why do you need BI?
• The amount of information (data) available with which to make decisions has grown significantly and is increasing rapidly. How the Silos of data is entered can vary widely from how it needs to be used for decision making or better insight.
• The need for timely and up-to-date access to information within seconds is critical. Timely availability of required information has become mission critical to many enterprises. BI is no longer considered nice-to-have but a must have application.
• Accessing information from disparate data sources is difficult but increasingly necessary to decision making. The information dealt with in decision making is spread across—Most of the time manual methods are used to create reports from data.
• Information is not just for bosses anymore: Giving required data access to operational users in business has become necessary than ever before. No longer the sole domain of analytical experts in headquarters, single departments or applications. Business Analytics are used by front-desk executives, back-office staff, field workers, call centre, multiple departments and so on—need to make more decisions. Operational business users can query the system themselves and get instant answers about critical questions, which is tracked by the system in real-time
1KEY allows enterprise application users to unlock this value from their investments by empowering their Business Users through flexible, dynamic & easy-to-use analytical reports. You can now derive huge cost-savings, Business benefits & Business User empowerment through the intuitive interfaces of 1KEY & deploy an Enterprise wide BI strategy at low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).
Get More Value out of your enterprise application Investments. Build required Ad-hoc and in-depth MIS reports from transaction application data based on specific criteria such as Manufacturing, Stock, Point of Sales, Outstanding – Product wise, Value wise, Location wise, Salesman wise, Party wise for single company or multi company, group company and much more. Just one of the many ways 1KEY can connect to multiple applications multiple database (like MS SQL, Oracle, Sybase, MYSQL, DB2, MS Access, FoxPro, Excel, etc.) to generate dynamic reports for complex analysis.
Leverage the Power of Information. 1KEY assists you in streamlining your decision making cycle. Every Organization takes critical Business decisions, but only those decisions are favorable for Businesses, which are based on FACTS.
The pace and complexity of information is ever increasing. Globally companies are becoming highly integrated and dynamic in their offerings. Many companies are faced with the challenges of managing growth, innovation and new business creation. There is a need to automate complex reporting, improve decision making quality, reduce costs and increase productivity / efficiency with dynamic MIS and ad-hoc analysis of available data.
Lack of consistent metrics across the enterprise can create problems, and lack of drill-down capabilities means users are unable to examine and understand the context of performance information. This is where 1KEY comes in with dynamic and powerful Reporting and Analytics solution for emerging businesses.
Posted on April 6th, 2009 by Vikram Kole
Filed under: Business Intelligence, View Points & Perspective
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