Utilizing technology to your advantage drives efficiency and leaves more time for you to do things that are actually important. From going paperless and transforming your processes into digital ones, where everything you need is conveniently found in one place, to making analytics reporting more effortless, today’s tech can make so many things so much easier.
Even how you manage your team is greatly impacted by the software you use to schedule training workshops, share information and documents, communicate, and provide learning materials. There are many interactive platforms which offer collaborate functions to help you change the way your workforce operates.
What is business intelligence?
One of the latest tech buzzwords is business intelligence or BI for short. It is usually associated with strategies, processes, applications, data, and other technical jargon we normally find in the IT and software world. Yet it’s the multifunctional uses that make BI so adaptive to different work processes. That’s why there are is a great range of BI software systems and apps designed to make it easier to manage everything from mountains of reports to project data and insights to customer relationship management to improving your overall visibility of these processes.
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There are many organizations that throw away valuable time looking for information from within their different data sources when they need help in gaining a deeper understanding of their business. When they do find this pertinent information, they still need to convert, merge and report said data, communicate their opinions about it, and discuss whether it is accurate, etc. With a BI system in place, all of the needed data comes from one source and can be accessed from one dashboard and converted into a report. This saves much time and energy while removing inefficiencies from the process.
Aside from all these areas in which BI is implemented to create an efficient workspace that drives progress for customers, internal reports and more, the group of people behind BI is the true key to making it all happen. While BI makes reporting easier, data becomes more meaningful when we give it context. This helps us explain trends, patterns, and deeper insights. It allows us to turn this useful data into action. In particular, proactive action.
When we view things in retrospect, it is easier to see the areas of improvements and use that information to ensure those areas are addressed in the future. Constantly being able to improve on past performance is critical to a thriving workforce; and again, it comes back to your team.
Having the tools and now the data to make proactive decisions and help your team work better towards achieving their goals and using BI to gather information and run reports is truly changing the way we run our team meetings.
And so, here are 5 ways you can use BI to frame your team meetings:
- Have a copy for everyone available during your presentation of the report and its findings
- Focus on the raw and graphed data from your BI-generated reports
- Stick to the visual representations of the data instead of extensive text; this way it’ll be easier to explain
- Highlight the key findings from your BI reporting, and focus on both the positives and negatives
- Have your previous BI reports available also for performance comparisons and to objectively view trends and patterns
As with any productive meeting, before and after, make sure you remember to do the following:
- Clearly outline the problem, so you know what your team needs to focus on to fix
- Measure the distance from here to there, so you can accurately estimate the length of time, resources, and effort to implement your changes
- Analyze the possible solutions, so you have more than a Plan B when it comes to finding the right solution
- Monitor improvements , because good intentions are never enough, and it’s important to monitor the progression of your tasks against the action items agreed upon
Hopefully, you find these useful next time you schedule a team meeting and center around your BI report findings.
Ewelina Marek is a recent university graduate and the marketing officer at INX Software, where it’s all about finding the right solution for workforce management personnel. She is passionate about writing, software solutions, industry research and bringing all these together to keep people informed.
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