Synchrotech Group

As mentionned in a previous article, some assume BI to be the magic differentiator between great and average companies and they are right. This is the way to give intelligence to your business. If you agree with this assumption, then try to answer the following questions in order to see whether your information systems allow you to achieve further tasks quickly, easily, and directly.

Answer “No” if you depend on others to deliver accurate information or even while your business and performance measurements lag after the fact. The Checklist gives you an accurate vision of the real knowledge you have of your own company. Answering "No" to many or most of these questions should mean that your business processes may move too slowly in the technology-driven Internet age.

Revenues and profitability

1. Can we identify the products, services, and channels driving revenue and profit?
2. Can we rank customers and customer locations by profitability?
3. Do we know when our sales reps/managers are on target, and are we able to act in time to make a difference?
4. Are we automatically alerted when critical costs, such as non-billable overtime rates, fall out of control?

Customer relationship management

1. Are we able to identify low-value customers and try to improve their value or design them out of our business?
2. Are we able to spot customer relationship problems early by monitoring leading satisfaction indicators, such as product or service quality?

Sales and marketing

1. Are we able to target high-value customers in order to lower our marketing risk?
2. Are we able to rank the success of product promotions to know what’s effective by product and market segment?
3. Do we know what is in our sales pipeline?

Finance

1. Can we identify underused assets?
2. Do we master all the facts to make the right capital asset decisions for the next exercise budget?
3. Are my budgets based on accurate histories and up-to-date trends and neither on silly figures, irrational assumptions, nor sandbagged numbers?

Supply chain

1. Are we able to easily identify how much we are spending with each supplier and use that information to negotiate lower costs?
2. Do we know which carriers are most often damaging our shipments (and on which ways) and/or delivering them late to our customers?
3. Are we able to predict product demand and trade that information for more cash and less inventory?

Strategy management

1. Are we able to provide our employees individualized key performance indicators, aligning them with the corporate strategy?
2. Do we deliver our employees instant access to a knowledge base of information that helps them to do their job?

Human resources

1. Do we own leading indicators to prevent health and safety incidents?
2. Is there any way to obtain the leading information required to measure and manage employee satisfaction and increase employee retention?

What can we do for you?

If you answered “Yes” too all or most of these questions, your organization is most likely an intelligent organization. You may possess superior intelligence regarding your employees, customers, partners, and operations. People at all levels can manage their own part of the organization, have intimate knowledge of your organization’s strategy, and know where to find information needed for further analysis quickly and directly.

However if you answered “No” to many or most of these questions, your business processes may move too slowly in the technology-driven Internet age. You will most likely have increasing difficulty maintaining a grip on your customers, prices, profitability, and employees as more-enterprising companies leverage technology, improve their processes, and capture market share. You should contact a BI and BPM expert such as Synchrotech Group who should be able to help you.