BlogThis Is the Right Time to Better Understand, Organize and Shape Your Business!
How our customers use IT Sapiens Business Analytics Tool to help managing their business during the COVID-19 crisis.
As a manager and business owner I decided to use this time to get all things in good order. First, I had to be ready to react quickly in case anything unforeseen happens during these times of uncertainty. But second, I wanted to shape my business for working with double speed, power and elegance once the crisis is over which required deeper look and analysis to discover new business opportunities.
I expected to have more free time but also was quite worried about economic impact to our company. Well, fortunately our customer activity and sales was actually increasing, as having the right tools to make informed decisions confidently by analyzing their impact on business and operations is now more important than ever.
We often learn from our customers, how better analytics help their businesses and I would like to share few trends with you:
1. Management and decision making
The most used is the general overview of KPIs and key metrics – all together in a single Dashboard view or alternatively arriving in a beautiful printable format regularly in your mailbox as PDF or Excel attachment, automatically with all the necessary calculations, formats and colors fixed.
Few examples:
- Sales pipeline, business trends over time - monthly, weekly or daily, including snapshots
- Percentage of deals won / lost
- Actual vs. goal, actual vs. forecast
- Revenues and expenses, detailed
- Marketing campaign efficiency
- Leads vs. customers converted
- Best and worst performing industries / products / teams or employees
- Unattended customers last x days, untapped customer segments
- Customer purchases and ratings by categories; frequent customers, most valuable customers
- Overall activity overview across employees and teams
- Average performance (e.g. how much time spent on a specific process like closing the deal, customer support or a specific task performed)
Our customers have found the tool especially helpful in change management: visualization helps seeing how specific area performs right now – with just a click on a point or column in the chart the manager can drill-down to the details and identify the root cause within minutes in order and react quickly.
As Michigan State University states:
"Data analytics help companies see shifts in what customers buy and give a clear picture of what products should be highlighted or updated. Whether it’s a production concern, a customer service issue or a deficiency among your employees, analytics can help to highlight key areas of concern when it comes to your venture’s ability to make a profit."
2. Daily routine, operations, process and performance optimization
As daily routine to manage operations and optimize the performance – not just the managers but also employees can have their Dashboard overview organized or receive regular automated e- mail attachment with summary of relevant information. Our customers find it very useful as a motivational tool for team members but also as a “to-do” or “follow-up” reminder.
Few examples:
- Personal KPIs
- Results reached vs. goals
- Efficiency, duration of a task, lead time
- Own unattended customers last x days
- Own customer payment delays for follow-ups
- Other automatically generated customer lists with certain criteria in order to add them to target lists for certain further activities
Earlier somebody in the company had to regularly prepare that complex Excel summary with various data points, functions and charts. With the Analytic Reporting Tool our customers get it all fully automated and now receive fresh report by e-mail regularly without extra effort – often saving 20% of time and cost.
Again citing the Michigan State University:
"Through data analysis, business operators can get a clearer view of what they are doing efficiently and inefficiently within their organisations. When a problem is identified, professionals with an analytics background are capable of answering crucial questions such as:
- What was the cause of the problem? (Reports)
- Why did it happen? (Diagnosis)
- What will happen in the future? (Predictions)
- What is the best way forward? (Recommendations)"
3. Data cleaning and improvement of data quality
In order to have proper inputs for all the above mentioned analytics and more, it is essential to collect the data and have them in a good order.
Our customers are using the IT Sapiens Business Analytics Tool to discover flaws in their data quality. Whether it is the summary or the detail – one can use the tool not only for identifying the issue, but also for actual correcting of the data. The tool allows the user to click on the exact source of each record and then edit the data directly in its source in order to fix them (of course subject to data access settings, as defined by the customer).
As you see – we often learn from our customers, how our Business Analytics Tool can be used in their businesses. We listen to our customers and constantly improve the Tool to address any business analytic needs our customers believe are the most important for driving short- and long- term success of their businesses.
Keep safe and healthy! You are always welcome to contact us at info@itsapiens.eu
Eva Narunovska,
CEO of IT Sapiens