Have you ever heard the saying, ‘you gotta have the tools’? As a side hobby, I do construction to take a break from the daily grind behind my PC, and my fellow construction buddies and I use the term, ‘you gotta have the tools’ quite often. So, what exactly do we mean? In a sense, if you want to complete a job and be as efficient at it as you can, you need the best tools available to do so. For example, if we’re roofing a house, in most cases, it makes more sense to use a roofing gun in the place of a hammer so as to complete the job in a shorter amount of time… ‘you gotta have the tools.’
So, what does this have to do with Business Intelligence? Just like in the roofing scenario above, Business Intelligence is the tool that companies should be using to be more efficient in their daily, monthly, and yearly operations. What do I mean? It’s simple. A Business Intelligence tool like Microsoft Power BI allows users to analyze their company’s data with rich interactive visuals so they can perform analysis on what impacts their company the most.
MS Power BI allows its users to pull data from multiple sources, create interactive reports and live dashboards, and then share these reports and dashboards throughout their company where it can be viewed on their PC, tablet, or mobile phone.
MS Power BI provides a way to identify trends throughout a company in order to predict how certain measures will perform, and in turn make informative decisions and actions. Companies can compare sales, inventory, operations, customer, and/or marketing data on a year-over-year, year-to-date, month-to-date, and daily basis.
It allows a company to benchmark their Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to work towards continuous improvement throughout their organization. Pinning these KPIs to their Power BI dashboards, provides CEOs, CFOs, Management, Supervisors, and even Employees a snapshot of how their area of the organization is performing.
Another key feature of Power BI is its data refresh. No more continuous copying and pasting into excel spreadsheets. Once a connection is made to a data source, it remains, and data is constantly refreshed so information is up-to-date and decisions can be made on a near real-time basis.
Technology is continuing to advance and the accessibility of data is becoming more and more prevalent. It is literally at our fingertips with our daily interactions of mobile devices. Those companies, who make the initiatives to invest in their data by utilizing BI tools, will begin to outperform those who do not. They will identify strengths and weaknesses throughout every aspect of their company, and in turn deplete flaws and increase efficiencies.
Let’s circle back around to one final example, referencing my roofing scenario.
‘The Hammer’: The old way of performing data analysis was to copy and paste rows of data into a spreadsheet from multiple sources, on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis. Then once the data was aggregated, we still had to perform our analysis and create the visuals we needed. This took time, countless resources, and was extremely exhausting.
‘The Nail Gun’: The new and more efficient way of performing data analysis is by using Business Intelligence tools (MS Power BI). Once the metrics and reports are created and data connections are made, our reports, tables, and visuals stay up-to-date and are shared seamlessly throughout our company all the while enforcing role-level-security on sensitive data. It is an efficient and dynamic way of doing business.
One last time, ‘YOU GOTTA HAVE THE TOOLS.’
Want to know more about how to improve your company by using Microsoft Power BI? Keep an eye out for a webinar hosted by Collectiv later this Month called, “Driving Efficiency Through MS Power BI.” In this webinar, we’ll review the key features of MS Power BI and ways your company can not only improve its bottom line, but become more competitive in your industry.
In the meantime, if you would like to learn more or have any questions on how your company can utilize MS Power BI, please contact Collectiv.
