Planning Analytics Blog

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Traditional BI—Dead Tech Walking?

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Data driven marketing @ The Slade GroupCompanies are overwhelmingly choosing a new breed of data-discovery and interactive-analysis platforms. In fact, they’re choosing these platforms even when they’re not the most appropriate tools for the job at hand and despite lingering concerns about how to govern data across the enterprise.

What’s at stake in this transition is not just the survival of well-known, IT-centric BI platforms. Companies will inevitably have to reconcile why they have separate system-of-record reporting platforms and data-discovery platforms because “no single vendor fully addresses both [needs].”

The complaints about traditional BI software are well-known: It’s slow and rigid. Creating reports is time-consuming, and it places a burden on IT teams.

Perhaps when there was no other choice, it made sense to invest in these tools, but in today’s world, what are they good for?

Self-Service Tools: Increasingly the Shape of Things to Come

Self-service tools may be much more flexible and easy to use—but not all of them are created equal, and many come with limitations.

Current business demand is for tools that are:

  1. User-friendly
  2. Intuitive
  3. Interactive
  4. Allow users to access or extend not just IT-curated data sources, but also non-traditional ones

But while most solutions are good at the user-friendly aspects, the technology can run into trouble when it comes to the extension of data access: some of the newer tools fail to provide “the accuracy and scalability” of traditional BI.

Dashboard Users Are Confident in Leveraging Business Data 

So what is the ROI from creating a dashboard? Respondents to a survey last year rate their level of confidence that their data analysis has led to measurable improvements in revenue and efficiency. These superior capabilities facilitate data analysis, enabling middle-market companies and SMBs to make better decisions faster.

Consider the case of Fred Ferber, the owner and CEO of Ferber Industries and the SMB-focused software firm, Conveyorware. When he needed to handle rapid growth, he turned to self-service tools to consolidate his business data.

This allowed Ferber to identify which products were selling, item return and repair rates, and optimize inventory levels to boost customer satisfaction. In addition, the software enabled him to track and analyze employee hours and costs.

“As I look back,” Ferber says, “our system’s ability to commingle data provided me with the most valuable information: This was data from which you could inform business decisions. The intelligence was essential to maintaining profitability, superior customer service, and satisfaction.”

When you feel tied into “old data” and static processes, bring us into your strategic conversations.

As an experienced analytics thought partner, we’ll give you new insights into your internal processes and buyer discovery trends, measure progress toward a set of quantitative goals, flag shifts in your markets or financial operations, and increase your customer experiences to a higher level of satisfaction.

Call us to start a neutral and friendly conversation. 512-478-3848.

We have some success stories to share that tell you we can help with your analytics and collaboration challenges. Latch on to a partner who can accelerate your data transformation, making your data visual and your planning analytics to the level of agile!

Strategic Analytics & Dashboards

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The Failure of Just Summarizing Performance

Data AnalyticsThe challenge is that in a world of too much data, with lots more on the way, there is a deep desire among executives to get “summarized data,” to get “just a snapshot,” or to get the “top-line view.” This is understandable of course. But this summarization, snapshotting and toplining on your part does not actually change the business because of one foundational problem:

People who are closest to the data, the complexity, who’ve actually done lots of great analysis, are only providing data. They don’t provide insights and recommendations.

People who are receiving the summarized snapshot top-lined have zero capacity to understand the complexity, will never actually do analysis and hence are in no position to know what to do with the summarized snapshot they see.

The end result? Nothing.

Standstill. Gut based decision making. No real appreciation of the delicious opportunity in front of every single company on the planet right now to have a huger impact with data.

So what’s missing from this picture that will transform numbers into action?

The solution is multi-fold (and when is it not? : )). We need to stop calling everything a dashboard. We need to create two categories of dashboards. For both categories, especially the valuable second kind of dashboards, we need words – lots of words and way fewer numbers.

Be aware that the implication of that last part is that you are going to become a lot more influential, and indispensable, to your organization. Not everyone is ready for that, but if you are this is going to be a fun ride!

The Solution: Text (Wisdom)

In order to make smart decisions about the data you need four things:

  1. You need access to data
  2. The ability to analyze (slice, dice, drill-up, drill-down, drill-around) interesting data points that your performance throws up
  3. Ability to understand what caused the performance (often by understanding who did, what and where in other parts of the organization)
  4. The power to make decisions

Here’s a link to some great best practices: www.kaushik.net/avinash/digital-dashboards-strategic-tactical-best-practices-tips-examples/