Written By Matt Van Vleet
All businesses need a way to consolidate data and turn it into actual information so it’s easier to make business decisions—and that’s what you get from Business Intelligence. That’s why most services businesses consider Business Intelligence tools a no-brainer. But are typical Business intelligence tools the solution, or is there something else that gets you what you really need when you’re in the services business? In this blog, we’ll explore the answer.
Types of Business Intelligence
There are 3 types of Business Intelligence:
Data. You need it, it’s useful for decision making.
Information. Shows how your data fits together.
Insight. Takes industry knowledge and turns it into ways to make the best decisions.
Data is valuable. Information is essential. Insights are Powerful. To have the most effective business Intelligence, you need all three. The trouble is, getting all three isn’t so easy.
Business Intelligence Challenges
While it’s essential, Business Intelligence is also very hard to achieve without a high cost or a high level of distraction. There are a number of common challenges that come along with implementing traditional Business Intelligence tools, some of which include:
It’s up to you to acquire and set up the infrastructure.
To use your data, you first have to spend time and money getting your data into a centralized place.
To get information out of the data, you have to spend time and money determining how the data should relate to other data.
To get good data, you have to spend time and money ensuring it’s clean.
You may not have the expertise to do all this on your own—and even if you do, the person at your company who you could have help out with it is usually a person whose main job is to do it for your clients. And that’s just getting it set up. Once you have your Business Intelligence software up and running, will you get what you need from it?
What’s Usually Missing
Now that most data management has moved to the cloud, Business Intelligence tools are faster than they’ve ever been before. Regardless of that, they’re still on a delay, making it so that you can’t make the decisions as quickly as you need to make them. Most BI tools require that you get the data, move it somewhere, and then get the answers and insights you need from it. That whole process is not happening in real time or in the same place.
Starting from scratch or integrating random systems is not the way for a service business. The ideal way to get from data to information to insight is to start with a system that’s purpose built for what you do. Then you can get your Business Intelligence faster and more efficiently.
Getting What You Really Need
When you gather data, what you really are looking for in it are insights to tell you what you should be spending on or pulling back on, when it’s time to push for more sales, etc. When you have a system that automatically tells you these things, you can get intelligence out of the system without focusing your time on building it. You can focus on attacking your real issues rather than chasing after them.
If you’re a services business that wants true Business Intelligence, what you need is an entire infrastructure, complete with data, information, and insights—and you can find all of this in the right PSA software solution.
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