When running a business, it’s important to keep tabs on every system or service that you use in order to make efficient and productive decisions. Your choices need to be based on statistics and facts, not speculation. As such, you need the correct tools in order to collect the data that helps you make the right decision in any given circumstance. By using business intelligence software, you can create detailed reports, charts, maps, dashboards and graphs that will help you make the correct decisions.
Business Intelligence Offers Descriptive Sets of Data
Business intelligence is often known as descriptive analytics. It doesn’t give you directions on what to do like an advisor. Instead, it tells you the state of your business by offering detailed sets of data, represented in formats that are both easy to understand and produce. What it actually produces can vary depending on the type of business intelligence software that you use and the types of methods you employ.
Balanced Scorecard
A Balanced scorecard (BSC) system takes a business on a journey to get to where it wants to be thus realising its strategic vision by achieving its objectives and goals. Essentially BSC is a strategic planning and management system that encourages organizations to communicate what they are attempting to accomplish. It helps to prioritize the right projects, products and services, and it measures your targets and your progress to each one. In other words, a BSC system attempts to make sense of larger strategy elements such as the purpose of your business and the vision you’re aiming for. It will introduce processes that help future strategy, as well as inform on past decisions. Core values are also taken into consideration and your areas of focus are also part of the larger picture. BSC systems are fantastic for businesses, government and also non-profit organisations. Roughly 50% of all major firms in the UK and US actually rely on BSC systems to help them make well-informed decisions.
A balanced scorecard system in your business can promote the following features that are crucial to managing your company:
Put your company on the same wavelength by communicating your business strategy and implementing itBuild a detailed plan with cascading scorecards to help organise your priorities and delegate aimsImprove your problem-solving performance by tracking and communicating knowledge around your businessIntegrate your BSC system with an emailing system that automatically forwards assessments, reminders and alerts.Export your reports to Microsoft Excel and customise themVisualise your targets and objectives against mapping locationsEasy integration with your existing data sources and systemsView your scorecards and edit them on virtually any device, be it your desktop, tablet, smartphone or anything that can access the web.
In short, a balanced scorecard is a great way to get a detailed overview of your business and how you can reach your desired goals. Although it sounds complicated, there are many ways to automate BSC and performance analysis thanks to performance management software. It adds an easy and intuitive method of managing your balanced scorecard strategy and will transform your corporate data into structured information.
Using Business Intelligence Software
Some people might feel like business intelligence software doesn’t quite meet their expectations or needs. This is usually the case if you look at the past and how business intelligence was usually handled by IT professionals that understood how to work the system and use the right tools. Thankfully, that is in the past and business intelligence has taken on a new form that is targeted towards average business users. This enables virtually anyone in the organization to access these tools and use them to help make the right decisions in your company.
There are two main types of business intelligence. The first is the traditional form that relies on IT professionals or employees that are trained in the use of in-house tools to generate reports and build data. The second is the modern approach to business intelligence, where people can use intuitive tools that are accessible by anyone.
These are both used thanks to their different applications. The traditional method tends to be used for things like financial reports where accurate data is required to make a good judgement, and modern business intelligence tools are desirable when a business’s dynamic is constantly shifting. As such, the latter option is perfect for businesses that are just starting out or need a bit of support to take them to the next level.
For more information contact Synergise Business Intelligence who have decades of experience designing and developing Intelligent Business Reporting Solutions.