[eBook] Benefits of scorecards and dashboards

In today’s modern mid-sized organization, having quick and easy access to company data in the form of a scorecard or dashboard is a cost-effective way to improve efficiencies and increase profit margins. The ability to turn raw information into actionable intelligence is essential to understanding how to better serve customers, reduce costs and streamline processes.

NB! This is an excerpt from our eBook 'Benefits of dashboards & scorecards: Do you really know how your business is performing?'

Most mid-sized companies generate a mass of data daily. If you don’t take advantage of your data, it can leave you playing catch up with competitors and hurt your bottom line. The data your company generates is likely stored in multiple systems. While much of your data may sit in an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, customer relationship management (CRM), spreadsheets, third-party systems and other databases will also contain vital information.

Trying to keep up with all the available data can be exhausting. There are sales figures, inventory data, financial management information and even KPI and internal performance data to wrap your head around. If your company lacks the right analytics solution to help you make data-driven business decisions, you could be missing out on gaining valuable insights about the true performance of the business.

Business intelligence (BI) makes reporting and analytics easy

BI aggregates the data from various systems and presents it in ways everyone can understand. A good BI solution will let you ask questions of your data and keep drilling down for more information. Your findings will be presented in graphs, charts, dashboards and scorecards and can be easily shared with others.

Companies that do not use BI are at risk of making decisions based on inconsistent data. You might have a manager from sales gathering information from your CRM system and the CEO could be using the company’s ERP data for analysis. Now you have two decision makers using different data to form a cohesive course of action. Opportunities will be missed.

Using a single source of data can reveal trends and present opportunities to better position your company for growth and prevent instability.

BI dashboards can provide the most valuable insight

As the saying goes, time is money. Decision makers need to be smart with their time and having a thorough insight into the many areas of your business is the key to ongoing success.

Reports created by IT departments can take hours, if not days, to reach you. By the time you have them in front of you, the information is no longer relevant. Trying to sort through complex data yourself, or relying on less technical staff to do it, is a poor use of time and will likely be riddled with errors. One of the easiest ways to gain valuable insights into company-wide performance is with a BI dashboard.

A good BI solution lets you see at a glance how your business is performing. The BI solution should make it easy to access dynamic, user-created dashboards and scorecards that present data in visual charts and graphs while also giving you the option to drill down further into the data to find out more. You’re always in control of how much – or how little – information you decide to analyze.

Non-technical people should be able to quickly build an interactive dashboard, apply permissions to select users, collaborate, and customize it without the need for help from IT.

In this eBook, we discuss how a BI dashboard can help busy decision makers get more out of their data.

The answers you need at your fingertips

You need a solution to cut through the clutter and give you simple answers to your difficult questions:

• • Why are sales down in the Midwest region?
  • How’s the new sales rep doing?
  • Why is the margin really low with Customer X?
  • Sales are down at the Anderson and Richmond branches. Why?
  • What else can I sell Customer Y?
  • How is our competitor’s introduction of their new gadget affecting our sales?
  • Is it time to clear out the slow-moving inventory?
  • Why are there so many open sales orders?
  • Sales Rep A has really some slow-paying customers. Why?
  • Which customers are the best candidates for rolling out our new product line?
  • Sales of the new gizmo are not meeting targets. Why not?

This was an excerpt from our eBook "Dashboards & scorecards: Do you really know how your business is performing?". To download your copy of the eBook, click here, or on the button below.