What did we do about planning and forecasting in the past? Well, a lot of what we did was based on guesswork. We might look at historical data and plan for growth that was unrealistic because it did not reflect the competitive market growth or the advent of online competition.
To be successful in business, every organization must find a way to accurately forecast and predict the future of its market, and its internal operations, and better understand the buying behavior of its customers and prospects. With the democratization of business intelligence and the advent of self-serve business intelligence tools, organizations hope to encourage and create Citizen Data Scientists and enable the average business user to leverage sophisticated predictive algorithms and BI tools without the expertise and skill of a trained data scientist. This approach allows users who are not statisticians, data scientists, programmers or analysts to leverage self-service tools to confidently make business decisions, share data, and reports and present data in a way that allows the organization to identify trends, patterns, opportunities and challenges.
Here’s what I know about Business Intelligence: Old or incomplete information does not constitute intelligence – what it does is to result in decisions that are sometimes wrong and nearly always misleading. When we provide a business intelligence tool that ties the hands of business users; when we give business users tools and dashboards that are designed by IT or analysts and assume comprehensive knowledge of user needs, we give our business users the wrong kind of tools!
The simplest, easiest and spreadsheetble (I just invented this word) information which can be used for predictive and forecasting is defined data over a period. For example, date or time driven patterns which keep repeating till the cows come home. We will not discuss this here and hope you are relieved of some scepticism about this article at this stage.
This might be a strange comparison but let me make it anyway! Think of data agility and data quality like a tight rope act. The tightrope walker is thinking about getting to the other side without falling. The audience wants to see grace and beauty during the process. They want to see a QUALITY act. In the case of the tightrope walker and the audience, they sometimes have very different goals.
A decade ago, your team could afford to raise an eyebrow at the term KPI analytics and perhaps even suggest that if your business wasn’t in a scientific or financial industry, you didn’t really need KPI software. But, today the world is different! Every business, no matter how large or small is challenged to manage and monitor its business in an objective manner using metrics and measurements that provide insight into the achievements and challenges and lead the team to draw appropriate, proven conclusions.
Advanced Analytics Software, Data Discovery Tools and Smart Visualization can improve your planning and forecasting process, and empower your organization. The Smarten Business Intelligence environment provides advanced analytics tools that are simple enough for business users and sophisticated enough to mash-up and manage data for optimal analysis, and flexible reporting.
It seems that everyone today is talking about Citizen Data Scientists. For some organizations the concept is perhaps frightening. The term may conjure up images of novices trying to do the work of someone with years of training and failing miserably in the process. For others, the image may be of an organization run amuck with business users leveraging sophisticated advanced analytics tools to create and share data that may be misinterpreted or distributed improperly.
Deep Dive Analytics and Data Analytics Tools Provide Clarity and Direction.
If you are looking at a BI tool, it is important to review of the deep dive analytics tools in the solution you consider. BI Analytics tools are not all the same. Your business intelligence initiative will not be successful unless you provide sophisticated data analytics tools in an easy-to-use interface. Don’t miss out on the user empowerment and accountability opportunities that come with a true self-serve, advanced data discovery solution.
If you are living in India, and since you are reading this and it is very likely you are, the possibility you said: so what? You have worked in multinationals operating in India, Indian multinationals, Nationalised corporations or corporations which are the property of the nation and never, never have you found Analytics हर हाथ में.
