Business intelligence adds great value to the decision-making process. Good reports and data visualizations can cut through to the key takeaways from the company data, giving people the information they need to make quick, accurate decisions. The data visualizations inside business intelligence software, as well as the dashboards used to run reports, are two areas that can make for great business intelligence software.
Your business intelligence system can also be used to improve forecasting. Changing business conditions, economic uncertainty, and shifts in supply and demand can make accurate forecasting more guesswork than science. However, with the data derived from your business intelligence system, you can forecast with greater accuracy and precision.
Answering the Three Big Business Questions
Forecasting involves three big questions:
- What are you selling?
- Who are you selling it to?
- When will you close the sale and take the order?
Without a business intelligence system, your forecasting abilities may be hampered by missing or incomplete data. Guessing isn’t going to work when it comes to an accurate forecast. You need comprehensive and timely information.
Business Intelligence Systems Provide Better Data for Forecasting
A business intelligence system offers an effective way of acquiring the data you need for better forecasting. With better forecasting comes a more efficient, productive, and cost-effective business.
Accurate and immediate answers to the questions above help everyone throughout your company do a better job. Procurement can order the right amount of raw materials; production can gear up to produce the best estimate of what is needed. Sales and marketing can use this data to target customers and industries more effectively by trying to sell more of what’s already selling well. Even accounting and finance can do a better job by assessing the company’s current financial state compared to anticipated revenue from future quarters.
Most companies can easily access transactional data. It may exist in spreadsheets or disparate files scattered throughout the company, but it exists. The challenge is merging various files, eliminating duplicate entries, and ensuring accuracy. If you don’t complete all those steps, you’ll spend hours working with spreadsheets—time that could be better spent on other tasks.
Business intelligence systems automatically amalgamate data from various departments into a series of reports you can run from a central dashboard. The information obtained from your BI system is accurate, timely, and reflective of all activities tracked within your organization.
This puts the power of forecasting into your hands based on trends you’re seeing live on the dashboard. Forecasting tools in BI systems can also help you anticipate shifts in customer demand. Using this data, you can improve inventory management, warehousing, distribution, sales, and marketing.
A business intelligence system can’t do everything, of course but, when it comes to improving your ability to forecast sales and demand, it’s one of the best steps to improve your business.
Powerful Analytics and Reporting
Emerald TC offers a powerful business intelligence system that can be used with Sage 100, Sage 500 and Acumatica. BizNet offers powerful analytics and reporting with additional features that make it a great solution for many companies.
BizNet offers many other benefits, too. Business intelligence software provides companies with useful ways to access and visualize their data. Instead of plain reports, you can generate multiple views of data so people can grasp important concepts and key takeaways quickly.
This powerful BI software offers many “out of the box” reports so you can begin using it quickly. If you need something special, the features built into BizNet enable you to customize reports so you can get exactly what you need.
Emerald TC
Emerald TC specializes in helping mid-market, multi-location companies increase efficiency, productivity, and profits. Let’s discuss how we can help you. Contact us or call 678-456-6919 today.