Data and Decisions – How to Use One to Feed the Other

Are you suffering from information overload, or do you have all the information and don’t know how to make sense of it all?

In the small and medium marketplace, executives and business-owners need to have the tools to filter key information that could prove critical to making sound business decisions. That’s no different to the big corporations, except the stakes may be higher if the wrong path is taken. Competition is fierce and there are always bigger, better-funded businesses looking to beat out their smaller, leaner competitors.

Decision-making styles differ; some are entrepreneurs who always have an instinct for what their company needs to do to be competitive and to grow, but they will probably need solid evidence to mitigate their risk and gain the support of their business managers.

Others turn to the internet so they can see what the pundits and bloggers are saying; subscribing to hundreds of newsfeeds which ultimately provide as many opinions on a particular topic. A number turn to advisory firms and read report after report until they find one that matches their own opinion, or several that have a consensus about the direction their type of company should be taking.

Few are actually using their own business data, now being collected in vast quantities from multiple management systems, as it is often a slow, manual and sometimes complex process to get the correct overall view and metrics, so they continue to operate in a departmental silo.

For those who are experiencing growth in this tough economy, finding your way through the data jungle will definitely need an investment of time and money; what you need to understand is that they can both be of reasonable size with today’s technologies. Smart companies are starting to make sense of their data by implementing easy-to-use business intelligence solutions and realizing the value of their investment almost immediately.

So if you think you don’t want to be on the leading edge, because that’s for the big corporations, think again. Having an integrated, real-time view of your business means

• Streamlined reporting
• Consistent views of information for all departments
• Collaboration, for example between sales and accounting
• Better and faster decisions based on intelligence and not just data

Business Intelligence gives you the opportunity to view, understand, analyze, and act on all the information available, regardless of source or format. With today’s technologies, solutions have become cost-effective for businesses of all sizes. It’s all about empowering the decision maker, and getting the right data into the right hands.