Why new approaches to business intelligence are needed in 2020
Companies are generating more and more data but not using it - even though studies show that using data correctly is like rocket fuel for business performance. New approaches to business intelligence are needed so that SMEs can use the potential of their own data and move towards a data-based decision-making culture in their own company.
Do you know these scenarios?
Monday morning: The sales manager presents the current figures at the sales meeting. To do this, he sent an Excel sheet with many tables and a confusing number of columns via email to the sellers early in the morning. But instead of talking about business progress, the meeting discusses the relevance and accuracy of the data. Some sellers have their own reports with different numbers, some participants haven't read the message yet, some don't want to participate in the discussion because they need more details before they decide.
Result: a completely unproductive meeting without any real insights or decisions.
Wednesday afternoon: For an important business meeting, the managing director needs an overview of the current financial figures by 8:00 a.m. on Thursday. However, creating an unscheduled dashboard takes at least 6 hours. This means that an employee from the finance department has to work a “night shift”.
Result: unproductive work and dissatisfied employees.
Friday noon: An important customer calls and wants to be informed about the current status of his order. The back office employee would like to connect the customer with the customer service representative, but he cannot be reached. Despite great effort and several internal phone calls, the customer has to be put off until Monday. Result: dissatisfied customer.
If this sounds familiar, then you are in good company, as half of all companies say that although they are generating more and more data, they are not using it or using it insufficiently. This is problematic because companies can only digitize successfully if they have their data under control. Only if you have access to all relevant data and can analyze this data in real time will you be able to make the right decisions and really advance your business.
New approaches to business intelligence are needed to unlock the true potential of company data. That's exactly what it's for Power BI the right solution.
Data usage and positive business performance correlate
How much data is actually worth and what effects its use can have for companies was examined as part of a Study shown. The Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), in collaboration with Splunk, surveyed 1350 senior executives and IT decision makers worldwide on the topic. The result makes you sit up and take notice:
- Mature companies increase annual gross profit by 12.5% through better data use
- Data innovators are 2.1x more likely to exceed customer retention goals compared to data stewards
- Data innovators are almost 10x more likely to generate over 20% of their revenue from new offerings compared to data stewards
Not all companies are using the power of their data. According to the study, half of the companies are at the first of three maturity levels “data manager” to prescribe. They still have to recognize the full potential of data. In this category, only 32% of the data is operationalized and usable for value creation. They are a little further “data user”, to which 40% of companies can be counted. They are starting to actively prioritize data strategies, but they are still in development: for data users, on average, only 41% of data is available for use. They are at the highest level “Data innovators”. They have the highest maturity and derive economic and business benefits from data initiatives. They report that 48% of their data is available for business use in real time.
Power BI as the leading business intelligence platform
Year after year, the IT consulting company Gartner publishes a series of market research results in the form of magic quadrants. And year after year, Microsoft's Power BI tops the Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platform: In 2020, Garnter named the application for the 13th time in a row as a leader in the quadrant of BI and analytics platforms. Thanks to almost 300 data connectors, almost all data sources can be connected to Power BI without any programming knowledge. Based on your individual needs, you create standardized real-time reports, prepare your data visually and create dashboards with level-appropriate information content. Share the dashboards via internal communication channels and thereby ensure a uniform level of knowledge. You and all other stakeholders immediately gain an overview, analyze your data effectively and can draw important conclusions.
With a powerful business intelligence platform, companies take an important step towards digitalization and a data-based decision-making culture. You are well on your way to becoming data innovators yourself.