Why Business Intelligence Matters Now More Than Ever for you company
Business Intelligence is important but if you're tempted to postpone any projects related to business intelligence or BI projects in general – think again. You need to understand that Business Intelligence Software can help companies navigate the current economic climate, and come out the other side ahead.
Business Intelligence Is Accurate
Business Intelligence allows companies to get a more accurate and detailed picture of what is going on in terms of business and customers. Business Intelligence can do this in different ways - accurate view of costs, liabilities, risks, customer buying patterns, supplier cost-effectiveness, etc.
Business Intelligence Is Visibility
Business Intelligence can bring visibility into your business at granular levels and help link different aspects of your company together. Take budgets, for example. It is all too easy for businesses to think that they have more money than they do and over-commit on budgets, only to find themselves later with liabilities that they cannot afford.
Business Intelligence is not Excel
Whilst rolled up financial reports from Excel can show expenditure and commitments against cost center codes, it is important to be able to drill into the figures, see where they have come from and to have some context around the expenditure incurred. Business Intelligence enables the expenditure, for example, to be viewed against progress and what should be expected next, and so enable organizations to forecast and be ready for invoices that are to come.
This is particularly important in a recession when organizations need to minimize outgoings and risks. It also enables them to plan savings in an informed and effective way.
Business Intelligence and Quantrix
Business Intelligence tools businesses to tap data and create analyses and dashboards. The visualization aspect often makes it easier for viewers to discern outliers and trends. Because these tools analyze historic data, this is particularly useful for gaining insights into past performance. Quantrix also allows you to create visualizations and dashboards from historic data. Quantrix differentiates in that you can then create forward-focused models from that historic analysis. For most Business Intelligence tools, the analysis is the "end of the road". They are not adding value or additional context to the data. You can get very good insights, view trends and exceptions, but then you still would likely create your budget, plan, “what ifs” and other models in spreadsheets. As we know from the economic crisis, historic patterns don't always predict future activity. To quote Warren Buffet, "If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians."