Do you know how your business is performing? Do you have real time information on sales and key business performance indicators? Do you have a 360 degree view of you business before you make those key decisions?

 

 

In todays world, businesses need to respond quickly to changes in the industry or risk losing their share of the market. To meet these challenges many forward-looking businesses are turning to Business Intelligence.

 

What are Business Intelligence Dashboards?

Business Intelligence Dashboards (BI) provide one central place for business users to access, view and analyse information in real time. This allows decision makers to make quicker and smarter critical decisions on both a day to day level as well as about the future direction of the broader organisation.

Broadly speaking, Business Intelligence is the process of collection of data, the transforming of data into information and finally transforming information into knowledge. Years ago these may have been reserved solely for managers of large scale companies however now they are common across organisations of all shapes and sizes.

 

Why use a Business Intelligence Dashboard?

Decision making for any company is obviously vital. Any companies future performance relies on timely decision making based on the correct information. It makes sense to provide the most decisive company employees with the best tools possible to provide this real time information. This brings many “real-world” benefits, some of which we have detailed below:

 

– Measuring company performance in real time

BI Dashboards are easy to access and read and provide instant insight into a companies operations at any time. They negate the need to rely on monthly static reports to check on progress or to respond to changing conditions. These Dashboards allow real time access to data that demonstrates an organisation’s activities and current state. This may include current sales targets, current outstanding jobs and more.

 

– Determine future goals and strategy

If you’re unable to measure something it’s really difficult to change or improve it. BI Dashboards are considered to be incredibly agile and with the wealth of data a company collects at your finger tips, it’s a lot easier and more effective to make wide ranging business decisions. Your future goal setting and broader strategic development become a lot more effective with access to visualisations of your most important data.

 

– Helpdesk tickets/customer enquiries in real time

BI Dashboards enable representation of outstanding support tickets, customer enquiries and much more. Displaying this data where your teams can see it is useful for managing their caseloads and removes the usual delay of requesting information from colleagues. Plus, when your employees know that performance is being monitored and evaluated in real time, it inevitably improves their productivity!

 

– Reduced time on employee reporting

Probably the most hated aspect of anybody’s job, reporting is no longer required with a BI Dashboard. Since data is collected automatically and pushed to a central location, you’ll never have to wait days for reports or chase those that never arrive. This is great for you as a manager and also gives your employees more time to focus on their core responsibilities.

 

– Quick implementation and learning

BI Dashboards are fairly quick to set up and personalise. They are also simple to learn how to use. As data is visualised in a way that is far more digestible than rows of tables or simple graphs, the majority of your team will be on board much quicker than implementing any other solution.

 

 

How can you implement a Business Intelligence Dashboard for your business?

Microsoft’s flagship products, Sharepoint and Dynamics, are a perfect solution. The power of Dynamics allows you to fully customise your business dashboard to suit the needs of your organisation. As well as being built to collect data and automate many of your previously lengthy processes, it does a great job at visualising it too. You have the option to see your data in views, charts, external web resources and web pages. Coupled with Sharepoint, which does a brilliant job at increasing collaboration, automation and communication, you will be armed with a solution that grows with you.

 

Learn more

We are specialists in developing custom Sharepoint and Dynamics solutions to fit specific business needs. If you’d like to learn more, we’d love to hear from you.