What are the advantages of a Business Intelligence/BI tool ?
At the heart of SME activity : data that can be used by a Business Intelligence tool
In the age of big data, a company’s flows generate an incredible amount of data representative of its business. Managers, business leaders and decision-makers of all kinds need to be able to rely on clear and synthetic representations of this strategic data in order to be able to make decisions quickly. This is where the BI (Business Intelligence) or Business Intelligence universe comes in.
As a real business management tool, Business Intelligence is today experiencing growing interest among VSEs and SMEs because of its ability to efficiently structure this data while maintaining ease of access: these tools do not require advanced IT skills to use them.
What are the advantages and benefits of a Business Intelligence (BI) tool ?
Using a Business Intelligence tool on a daily basis allows you to monitor the data that is at the heart of your business.
Not limited to your structure or even to one of your software programs, the data monitored may also be external to your structure, in order to analyze the competition or, for example, trends related to your sector of activity. They can also be extracted from your various software (accounting, ERP, Excel spreadsheet, etc.) and compiled to set up comparative indicators and thus build extremely relevant dashboards.
The advantages are thus numerous and can represent a real gain in time and performance. A BI tool allows you :
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- To create relevant analysis reports without the need for advanced computer skills. Data is extracted from your usual management tools and injected into your BI tool. Intuitive and user-friendly, the BI universe progresses in an essentially Excel-based environment.
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- To secure your data and choose to whom and how to distribute it. These reports can be distributed easily to share strategic information, while managing, in parallel, the access and modification rights of the people concerned.
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- To ensure that you have quality data. A BI tool allows you to realize, quickly, sometimes even in real time, the inaccuracy of your data with the reality of the field. This makes it easier for you to take quick corrective and preventive actions.
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- To have a quick and easy understanding of even the most complex data. Visual modeling makes it possible to understand, at a glance, the trend and evolution of a report. For example: you can follow the evolution of the turnover of one of your departments by filtering the results by collaborator, period, product, etc. The main trend will be immediately visible thanks to the visual modeling tools of your BI tool.
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- To be able to set up alerts to track key indicators of interest to you. Real performance indicators, these alerts allow you to gain in reactivity and precision in your daily management.
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- To gain efficiency and speed in decision making. The access to your data is facilitated, their visualization is simplified, allowing you to obtain results at a glance and to accompany you in your decision making with full knowledge of the facts.
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- To analyze data in real time. Unlike a classic Excel report, a Business Intelligence tool connects directly to the database you are interested in. This allows real-time updating of information and avoids the obsolescence of your reports. You are thus assured of having reliable information at your disposal.
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- To have a competitive advantage. Your business intelligence tool can also be used to aggregate data from your competitors by cross-referencing it with your own information. It is therefore a particularly powerful tool for your benchmarking work.
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- To promote internal development. A BI tool can be a lever, internally, to implement financial or structural changes by enabling you to put forward concrete, quantifiable and up-to-date elements.
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- To evaluate your KPI’s. Tracking your KPI’s every day can be a tedious task when you don’t have the right tools. A Business Intelligence tool allows you to save time and performance from the very first use. Your tables, reports and KPIs are refreshed in a single “click” updating all your data without having to tinker with your layouts.
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- To have a tool 100% adapted to your business. Your data is at the heart of your business. That’s why a BI tool is fully configurable to correspond to what makes up your daily activity: categories, products, processes, etc. At any time you can add fields, delete them, or modify the settings of existing fields without affecting the rest of your report.
What are the different functionalities of a Business Intelligence (BI) tool ?
The functionalities of a Business Intelligence tool are particularly vast. However, we can retain several key features :
- The realization of cross tables.
- The management of data tables in the form of tables, listings, cells.
- The creation of dashboards.
- The creation of activity reports.
- The implementation of ratios with alert threshold.
- The creation of personalized gauges.
- The distribution of reports in different formats (PDF, Word, etc).
BI and ERP : what synergies are possible ?
ERP and BI are two perfectly complementary tools. Indeed, ERP allows you to manage your entire production, from the commercial phase to delivery and after-sales service follow-up at your customer’s site. Your ERP collects a lot of information related to your business and organizes it so that you can optimize your work.
However, this collected data may require additional formatting and analysis. This is where your Business Intelligence tool comes in to aggregate information from multiple sources, of potentially different types, all in order to give you a micro and macro view of your structure and its flows.
Would you like to implement a BI tool in your company ?
We are a partner of the company Report One, publisher of the decision support and reporting software suite My Report. It is thanks to this close collaboration that we can offer you a Business Intelligence tool working in complete synergy with our ERP Synoptic. We are today certified Bronze Partner, a guarantee of our expertise and our knowledge of the stakes related to Business Intelligence.
What about the accounting part ? We thought of everything while developing the tables allowing you to rework your data from SAGE !