An introduction to
Business Intelligence:
overcome everyday
data issues
Transforming data into
business insights
Introduction
The vast majority of companies generate large amounts of data. Some
companies might generate more than others, but the importance of
data is in its quality, not quantity. Not taking advantage of the potential
benefits of your data can leave you at a competitive disadvantage, it
can impact your profitability and it can compromise your ability to make
informed decisions.
The ability to turn raw information into actionable intelligence is crucial to
understanding how to better serve customers and streamline processes,
reduce costs and improve profit margins.
What is Business Intelligence?
Business intelligence (BI) leverages software and services to transform
data into actionable insights that inform an organisation’s strategic and
tactical business decisions. BI tools access and analyse data sets and
present analytical findings in reports, summaries, dashboards, graphs,
charts and maps to provide users with detailed intelligence about the
state of the business.
The term Business Intelligence often also refers to a range of tools that
provide quick, easy-to-digest access to insights about an organisation’s
current and forecasted state, based on available data.
Everyday signs your
business needs business
intelligence
There are a number of tell-tale signs which indicate that business intelligence is lacking within a business:
1. You lack actionable data
The data your company generates is likely stored in multiple systems which contain vital information, such as an ERP system,
customer relationship management (CRM) system, spreadsheets and other third-party systems.
2. Reports are created manually or require IT support
Creating manual reports or relying on your IT team to build custom reports can take days and by the time it hits your desk, the
information may no longer be useful. This time delay can impact an organisation’s ability to make quick decisions regarding
day-to-day operations and inevitably lead to missed opportunities.
3. Spreadsheet, spreadsheets, spreadsheets
Analysing data through confusing spreadsheets can be frustrating. It’s a highly manual process that is prone to error and often
delivers outdated and inaccurate data.
Often there are different versions of one spreadsheet, which are all being updated by different people at different times. This will
inevitably lead to version-control issues and the possibility of multiple versions of the truth. Overall, using spreadsheets to analyse
data is inefficient and can be ineffective, making analysis far more difficult than it should be.
4. Reliance on static reports
The reports you collate from your systems and spreadsheets lack the ability to perform trend analysis or deliver high-level data-
driven insights. The information they do provide is referred to as ‘static’.
Static analytical reports don’t allow you to dynamically manipulate your data. Once a report is set up, you can’t change its basic
structure. This may be okay for things like monthly and quarterly reporting, but if you want to dig deep into your data for analysis,
static reports are insufficient.
5. An absence of Tactical Information
Management can identify directions they want the organisation to take. Often these are expressed as Key Performance Indicators.
But to use KPI’s you need to repeatably get access to this information in a timely and reliable manner. For example, looking at
effective hourly costs, inventory turnover, average support resolution time.
Examples of insights
provided by BI
Here are just a few examples of insights and advantages that can be provided through business intelligence:
Senior Leadership
BI can provide senior leadership with the overview they need without having to wade through the detail, such as sales pipeline
value, employee engagement levels, revenue and much more.
Operations
BI tools can help not only track budgets, but give visual insights into financial data, potential problem areas, and overall business
health.
HR
BI can help organisations understand everything from salary analysis and diversity within the business to trends in absenteeism
and staff turnover.
Sales
BI can help improve sales KPIs dramatically through visualising the sales cycle, displaying conversion and churn rates, tracking the
pipeline, total revenue, and more.
Marketing
View all marketing KPIs in one place so you can track engagement and performance, as well as conversions, cost per lead,
website traffic, and analytics.
Examples of Business Intelligence dashboards
Example: employee productivity BI dashboard Example: student analysis BI dashboard
Example: customer analysis BI dashboard Example: supply chain analysis BI dashboard
Benefits of BI for
transforming business
insights
1. Aggregates all data into ‘single pane of glass’ view
BI aggregates the data from your company’s various systems and gives you an easy-to-analyse single source of truth that
can be used to help make more effective business decisions based on facts. It lets you ask questions of your data and keep
drilling down to find out more.
2. Report generation at the click of a button
BI provides end-users without IT skills or technical knowledge access to data and makes it easy for them to generate their
own reports at the click of a button. Reports can be scheduled for specific times and are easily customisable with just a few
clicks.
3. Enable informed decision making across the business
BI empowers a company’s entire team – at every level of the business – to access and analyse data and start making more
informed decisions based on facts. It puts management objectives front and centre.
4. Fast decision making based on real-time data
BI delivers accurate insights based on consolidated, real-time data and presents it in a way that is easy to understand. A
good BI solution assembles your assorted datasets and provides lightning-fast information as a single grid, dashboard, chart
or graph.
5. Totally flexibility to create, manipulate and view data
through dynamic reporting
BI provides users with dynamic reporting. Dynamic reports can be created, manipulated, and modified at will. They are
designed to give you the information you want, when you want it. You control how you view your data by adding, filtering
and changing the information you see.
6. Forecast future performance based on historical data
BI provides forecasting and predictive analysis. Typically reporting tells you “what you have done and where you are”
– modern BI solutions take your current data and use statistical methods to accurately forecast and predict future
performance, truly enhancing your business decision making.
Real-world examples
of BI at work
Rutland Cycling leverages BI
Rutland Cycling, one of the UK’s leading cycle retailers, had data held
across many sources including finance, CRM system, rental management
systems, e-commerce applications and a myriad of spreadsheets.
Developing business reports was time consuming and unreliable.
Rutland wanted to power their growth. They wanted to use their data
assets as a key information source for managing the business on a day-to-
day basis as well as medium-long term planning.
The BI solution that Village Software delivered resulted in:
• Easy migration from our legacy Finance system to full ERP
• Saving of 1.5 workdays per week in report preparation
• Concise analytics across all our business services
• Empowering our departmental managers with self-service reporting
and analysis
• Curtailed “Anecdotal decision making” – decisions now made on facts
“We’ve been so pleased with the solution
from Village Software and the results have
really changed the way we work”
- Mark Gilbert, Finance Director, Rutland Cycling
Prinovis increase visibility of manufacturing process
Prinovis UK, the UK’s largest gravure printer, were already using
sophisticated manufacturing systems with real-time shop floor data
collection but they had no way of evaluating the balance of speed, waste
and uptime on the production line; dynamic visibility was required.
Whilst their systems provided sources for current-state and end-of-shift
reporting they require a range of key performance indicators to monitor
the efficiency across the large site and to focus on waste, team utilisation
and other key issues.
The solution? Village Software pulls data from a range of on-site and
cloud systems to deliver an overall picture of the operations and activity-
based costing of the operation. This is provided in a range of paginated
reports, custom dashboards and explorable data on key production and
performance data, integrated with Prinovis’s existing systems and fed
through to international group systems. These insights allowed them
to make operational changes which in turn improved efficiency and
productivity and reduced waste.
“Through collecting data from various sources,
the reporting provides us with a valuable
insight into our daily environment, enabling
performance to be assessed ‘up to the minute’.
This has extended our capability whilst enabling
us to save resources.”
- Dean Hayward, IT & Programme Director, Prinovis
Why is Business
Intelligence Important?
Business intelligence can help companies make better decisions by
showing present and historical data within their business context whilst
enabling accurate forecasting of potential organisational performance.
Being able to deduce action from data is a competitive advantage
leading you to grow your customer base, improve employee
productivity, and create a better product or higher quality service.
Business intelligence enables you to know what’s happening in real
time, why it’s happening, how to stop it or capitalise on it, and how
to predict what will happen next.
What level are you at in
your data journey?
BI transforms businesses. It provides the insights that deliver informed decision making which can drive greater efficiency,
productivity and innovation. BI is a process which will change as your business evolves. Where are you in this process? The
diagram below shows the five stages of the data journey.
Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 Level 5
Unaware Opportunistic Standards Led Enterprise Transformative
Enterprise Business
performance strategy
Sophisticated Deploy an culture driven
Senior business program enterprise
BI &
management metrics
member technology
becomes BI framework
Inconsistent Limited / small standards start
Information One off report data and siloed user champion to engage
disorder. requests reporting community
Data held on
spreadsheets
30%
19%
18%
7%
33%
Statistics reflect the number of organisations at each level in the data journey
Village Software –
your Business
Intelligence experts
Village Software Engineering design and build incredible software
solutions with the single aim of improving your business.
Our team of innovative and skilled developers work across many sectors
including manufacturing, education, transportation and logistics,
healthcare, utilities and retail.
We provide application development, enterprise integration and business
intelligence software solutions that embrace leading edge technologies
and methods.
Our curiosity and intelligent thinking help us to deliver quality solutions
that don’t just work but work for you.
We’d be delighted to talk to you
about how we can help transform
your business through BI.
[Link]
info@[Link]
+44 (0)151 7097728
The Tempest
12 Tithebarn Street
Liverpool L2 2DT