We live in a data-driven world. Accurate and timely business intelligence (BI) is critical to effective planning and forecasting. But organizations face many challenges in their data journey because every facet requires specialized knowledge and expertise to devise the best solution.
Collectiv is like a BI Swiss Army knife. Each of our consultants has a unique background and skill set to help enterprise teams tackle any and all challenges with BI, planning, and forecasting using the Microsoft Power Platform and Power BI.
Below are specific challenges our team has solved that your team may be experiencing right now. We hope hearing about these first hand experiences gives you ideas for solutions that will work for your enterprise as well.
Convert Reports to Power BI
Many organizations find report conversions, such as converting Excel to Power BI or Tableau to Power BI, the most challenging. Teams may also overlook the importance of data modeling, which would allow them to combine reports and support self-service to increase productivity.
The team at Collectiv is skilled at both guiding teams in making this conversion as well as defining the ideal scope of reports that are even necessary to migrate.
The Solution in Action
When we work with enterprise teams on report conversions, we first assess their existing reports—a number that is usually in the hundreds—and conduct a report rationalization. We identify which ones to eliminate or combine and create a list to finalize the project scope.
Then, we design a plan to implement the conversion. Typically, we start with a small subset of reports to achieve quick wins and get buy-in across the organization to drive adoption.
Once we finish the conversion, our team provides training that supports continuous improvement to help organizations maximize the impact of their investment.
Fix Inefficient Planning Cycles
Many highly skilled employees spend too much time on tedious and manual tasks during planning and forecasting cycles. They’re chasing their tails without ever getting reliable and actionable results that drive the business forward.
Collectiv speeds up and optimizes this process, helping teams come up with a better game plan for their enterprise along the way.
The Solution in Action
When we help enterprises improve planning and forecasting efficiency, we first take the time to truly understand their requirements. Sometimes we help enterprise teams identify needs they didn’t even realize they were able to address.
Next, we design a technological plan to automate repetitive tasks, freeing up their highly-skilled and highly-paid employees to focus on the nuances of the data and act on the insights.
One healthcare organization used about half a dozen planning tools, but many of its employees still spent a lot of time meshing data. They struggled with long planning cycles, which impacted their ability to take action in a timely manner.
To boost their ability to implement meaningful change, we set up their BI and reporting so decision-makers could tweak the numbers and gain instant insights to make real-time decisions.
Automate Processes With Power Platform
Manual processes are a productivity killer, especially in areas like sales, where timing and speed are of the essence. Many organizations recognize the value of automation, yet they don’t have the IT resources to set up the technology.
Often, teams don’t have the depth of knowledge in innovation and technology to make decisions about where to implement automation or how.
The Solution in Action
We solve this challenge by building applications with Power Automate. To implement custom automation, enterprise teams are taken through our comprehensive project process, from requirements gathering and development to user acceptance testing (UAT) and final production.
One enterprise we worked with used Microsoft Dynamics 365 throughout the sales process. They wanted to speed up sales cycles by ensuring the right personnel received notifications immediately when the sales record status changed. We created a trigger and action using Power Automate to help the team save time and effort.
In the end, this allowed their sales team to stay on top of key tasks without constantly having to manually check their systems.
Create Easy-to-Use Business Apps
In the past, building business apps to solve complex problems required a team of developers and a lot of time. These apps were often difficult to build and complicated to use, lowering adoption and impacting productivity.
Now, thanks to innovative low- and no-code platforms, organizations can create their own custom-built apps to solve key business problems with little to no coding knowledge.
The Solution in Action
Power Apps allows organizations to build easy-to-use business apps quickly. The apps pull data from a centralized location while various users input or retrieve the data and insights from different apps.
Collectiv helps teams identify core needs for these apps and create a plan to bring them to life.
Using Power Apps, we helped a healthcare organization create an app for doctors to enter referrals. The scheduling staff is now able to see the same data on a different app and communicate with the doctor when they have scheduled the appointments.
Build Scalable Solutions
Many organizations struggle to find the right technology to address their problems. Others apply a blanket solution to every issue and wonder why they can’t achieve the desired outcomes. In short, they fail to connect the right technology with their needs.
Collectiv helps enterprise teams build a bridge between their biggest pain points and the technological solutions that are possible. Not only do we identify the right solution, but we also make sure that solution is able to scale with your organization.
The Solution in Action
When working with enterprise teams, we take the time to understand problems and create customized solutions to address root causes.
We recently completed a project with a food services organization that required specific financial reports and technical documents. After gathering requirements, we realized we must go beyond the immediate needs to create a much larger data model.
In the end, we built a solution that met the initial requirements and enabled the enterprise to scale in the future as their needs continue to evolve.
Support Efficient Financial Forecasting
Analysts spend a lot of time creating forecasts due to manual processes and calculations. While this forecasting is crucial to effective planning and decision-making, it often happens at the expense of other core business tasks.
Organizations can automate these tedious tasks so employees can spend more time on analytics and collaboration to drive business growth.
The Solution in Action
An organization needed to make their rates more competitive by lowering administrative expenses. To do this without sacrificing quality, they needed to consolidate financial forecasts that were in various Excel files to improve planning and forecasting efficiency.
Using Power BI, we helped bring all of this data into a single location, helping this enterprise team better identify opportunities and make accurate forecasts much faster. Before working with Collectiv, this process used to take a month. Now it only takes them a week to gather insights and make informed business decisions.
Automate Financial Statements
Many organizations try to automate their financial statements by creating different Excel sheets and files. The process is cumbersome and error-prone, impacting planning and forecasting efficiency and accuracy.
The Solution in Action
We help organizations bring data from all sources into Power BI to generate financial statements. Stakeholders can view them ad hoc or set up a subscription via email to receive reports automatically on a specific schedule.
We helped a large consulting firm automate financial statements so decision-makers could see income statements, balance sheets, and trial balances for specific branches. We brought the data into Power BI and published the reports with Power BI Service. Now stakeholders can view their financial data and receive alerts when KPIs change.
Solve Your Enterprise BI Challenges With the Right Technology
No matter what your BI challenges are, our team helps you identify the problem, select the right tools, and design the most efficient processes to improve planning and forecasting in your business.
Get in touch to see how our team can help you build the best long-term BI solution.
