Business Intelligence Blog

The retail industry is a tough and competitive environment. With every business trying to top one another, it becomes all the more difficult to bring in new customers. The key to retail success in such a cut-throat environment is via your data. The more you know about your customers, the better positioned you'll be to deliver a more personalized shopping experience without blowing out cost-to-serve.

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Topics: Business Intelligence Basics, Industry - Retail, Job Role - Inventory/Operations

Due to budget and time constraints, some managers believe business intelligence (BI) is not worth the investment. Some people think they're saving money, when it fact, the failure to implement BI will cause the business to lose money. This blog examines a few of those costs.

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Topics: Strategy, Management and Performance

Having the appropriate data analytics solution is vital to strategic decision making. However, one-size-fits-all solutions don’t always address a company’s specific needs. Cloud technology has facilitated the rise of vertical SaaS data analytics and more bespoke, industry-specific solutions. 

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Topics: Business Intelligence Basics, Industry - Food and Beverage, Industry - HVAC/Plumbing, Industry - Building & Industrial Supplies, Job Role - Executive

Smart purchasing and stock optimization boosts your organization’s bottom line. What am I buying, selling, holding and what’s the cost? It’s a messy ask, report-wise. If you’re involved in purchasing decisions, you don’t care so much about who’s buying your product. It’s more about what’s walking out the door, and how fast, so you can replenish it. Business intelligence allows you to be in control of your data and know at any point in time; what stock is on hand, what's been ordered and days of cover.

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Topics: Business Intelligence Basics, Job Role - Inventory/Operations

As businesses grow and become more digital, so too does the amount of data available to track and analyze. For people to take advantage of the abundance of data and make well-informed decisions, you must have access to a tool to get a single, real-time, fact-based version of the truth. Unfortunately, because of its familiarity, Excel is used as a catchall for business data. If you're using spreadsheets as your data analytics solution — it's worth reassessing your business tools —ready for the future.

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Topics: Business Intelligence Basics, Job Role - Executive, ERP - Microsoft Excel, business intelligence dashboards

Phocas business intelligence and Datafile software solutions, two longstanding software providers dedicated to solving data problems for the  SME market in the United Kingdom, have signed a local partnership agreement. Together, they aim to provide a digital transformation roadmap to small and medium sized businesses by making business intelligence compatible to all versions of the Datafile ERP. 

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Topics: Industry - Manufacturing, Industry - Wholesale Distribution, Company Updates, Industry - Retail, Press release, data analytics, ERP - Datafile

User adoption refers to the acceptance of a new system or process in technology. Gaining staff acceptance is an important consideration for companies hoping to move from an old system (such as spreadsheets) to a modern, more comprehensive and efficient system such as business intelligence.  A user adoption strategy is crucial to the new system's success so people know how the software will benefit their specific roles and how they can contribute.

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Topics: Business Intelligence Basics, Job Role - IT, Job Role - Executive

A decade ago, an accountant balanced the daily transactions and prepared a statement of profit and loss for the year-end. In recent times, the ERP and spreadsheets became the accountant’s best friend to create static reports and communicate historical financial performance. Now in today’s fast-paced business environment, the story has flipped on its head. Accountants manage the end-to-end accounting process as well as act as strategic partners to growth and success. They use accounting analytics to review data, collect insights and communicate outcomes to people across the organization, so everyone can understand the impact of their decisions in real-time.

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Topics: Business Intelligence Basics, Job Role - Finance, Job Role - Executive, Financial Statements, business intelligence dashboards

Myles Glashier, our co-founder and co-CEO explains the evolution and development of Phocas on the popular podcast,'Scaling Up'. Myles chats with Ed Cowan about the story behind the data analytics business. The genesis for Phocas came when Myles was a backpacker in London and met ERP owner Paul Magee. The two co-founders have stuck together over 20 years, bootstrapping a subscription-based business intelligence software company into a global success story. If they had one rule, it's culture matters.

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Topics: Industry - Manufacturing, Industry - Wholesale Distribution, Job Role - Sales, Company Updates, Job Role - Executive, Industry - Retail, Job Role - HR

Business analytics provide people with an accurate and holistic view of their business. Executives and managers now have the ability to use data for real-time, actionable insights into everything from customer buying patterns to inventory management to make timely and accurate decisions. In this blog, we discuss five strategic benefits of business analytics .

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Topics: Business Intelligence Basics, Job Role - Executive