Business intelligence is quite the buzzword these days, especially when it comes to big data and enterprise level organizations. However, small businesses also produce a lot of data and without analytics, they lack the abilities to understand what their true ROI is, what efforts are/aren’t working and ultimately how to run a business that will achieve or continue to be successful.
Some of the challenges small businesses are facing when diving into BI are not knowing where to look, finding and implementing the right solution or encountering issues with integrating the BI tool with their systems. These reasons for not utilizing BI are, for lack of a better word, reasonable. Big data is just that- big and confusing. And with all the tools in the market now, sifting through options can be overwhelming… not to mention, integrating the tool so that it produces meaningful results requires both technical skills and business expertise.
At GadellNet, our BI Teams in St. Louis and Indianapolis concentrate on helping our clients make sense of their data – integrating applications, providing more in-depth reporting across platforms and simply making more information available and more “intelligent” for our customers’ personalized needs. So whether you are looking into BI solutions or optimizing your current solution, on your own or with a trusted small business IT partner, these are some great points to take into consideration:
- Data Can’t Stand Alone- When reviewing the data, one metric is just a piece of a much larger issue. It’s important to review all the metrics together, in real-time, to accurately analyze.
- Great Data Doesn’t Always Render Great Results- When it comes to data, context and interpretation are key… without, the results can lead businesses down a path to disaster.
- Timing is Key- It’s important to have an executive management platform. Delayed information doesn’t inform and help businesses make the right decisions, even though it may provide insight on something you should have done in the past to render better results.
- The Recipe Matters- If you’re comparing metrics from different platforms, they need to be configured to measure the right/same metrics. Otherwise, you may think you’re comparing apples to apples, but in reality, you’re comparing apples to oranges.
