Four Crucial Analytic Tools for Savvy Businesses

In today's fiercely competitive business landscape, merely focusing on reporting and analyzing historical data is no longer sufficient. The ability to access high-quality, timely data in real-time has become your most crucial business asset.

Analytic tools are essential for creating efficient business processes and aiding decision-making. Your BI or analytics tools should seamlessly integrate with your ERP/business software system and, more importantly, enable you to transform data into actionable insights for immediate decision-making. This equips your staff with the right tools, allowing them to spend less time searching for reports and more time focusing on sales or providing superior customer service.

Essential Business Tools You Should Be Using Here are the top four indispensable information tools every business should utilize today:

KPIs – Front & Centre To achieve revenue and profitability targets, constant awareness of the 'big picture' is necessary. Easy access to live analytics or KPIs is crucial for measuring how well your business is achieving its key objectives. Some business software/ERP providers offer this to varying degrees, but it's always good to consider how the latest technology addresses this key management requirement.

For instance, a 'control desk or personal workspace' can provide a consolidated view of all your vital statistics on-screen as soon as you log in. This feature offers access to a single location displaying various elements of your business in real-time. Control desks and personal workspaces can be tailored to each user to display only what they require or are permitted to see.

A control desk works with properties within your system to report on aspects such as weekly or monthly orders, average value, and total value. You can also compare these to previous months to evaluate your business's performance and look at the top 5 or 10 areas of your business. Control desks allow you to create analytics for almost anything within the system relevant to your role in the company, making it a very useful tool for tracking wider business objectives and short-term goals alike.

The best control desks available today do not require a consultant or developer to configure. You can set them up, change, or move things around to suit your business needs. It's also possible to create custom menus or shortcut tabs for easier access, such as monitoring unbilled deliveries, scrolling news, weather reports, exchange rates, or showing time zones.

Having this capability provides a true and accurate understanding of your business's performance, giving you the confidence to make timely, actionable decisions to boost progress towards your goals.

Workflows – Have it Your Way The business environment has fundamentally changed over the last decade, increasing the need for process automation. Businesses now look to their business management/ERP software for new and improved ways to automate repetitive processes, significantly reducing the number of tasks performed manually.

Workflows and business processes are vital tools for businesses as they automatically create sequential tasks and activities to ensure work is completed efficiently. This tool highlights the most efficient, quickest, and most satisfying string of tasks and procedures for businesses to use.

Dashboards within your system can help manage workflow items and present the data you need when you need it. Management should use workflow dashboards to track all their key performance indicators. You can customize it to see exactly what you want while maintaining the capability to delve deeper if required. You can see all the sales orders that haven't been processed yet, new customers, overdue invoices, unapproved timesheets, and more. And it remains live at all times.

Workflows can be defined per user, based on their preferences. Items requiring attention can be highlighted and listed in your on-screen dashboard or control desk. Headline information can be provided, but you can also delve deeper when necessary or complete tasks directly from this screen.

If you're aiming to take your business to the next level, no other tool will present the information you need better than this. Dashboards showing your workflow items offer a wealth of information. When one or more of your key performance indicators underperforms, you can quickly see what is happening and drill down to the root cause to take corrective action.

Reports — Delivered to You While some businesses prefer to see their critical information as it happens, others depend on daily, weekly, or monthly reports. Manually running and pulling reports isn't necessary, as your ERP system should be able to create automated, tailored reports. Scheduling tasks or reports can be set up within your system so that when certain conditions are met, key performance measurements and tailored reports are periodically sent to your dashboard, email account, or on-screen.

For instance, you may want to know your turnover, invoices and credit notes raised, or report on cash receipts, debtor's days, and bank balance. These tasks can be scheduled to be emailed to you or the relevant person. They can even be assigned to a folder for later viewing. These features provide a better understanding of your business's performance and more control for various departments, such as finance and HR. Instantaneous access to reporting can also speed up decision-making within your business, as opposed to manually pulling the information, which could slow these processes down.

Scheduling tasks or reports is a great time saver and can bring unprecedented efficiency to your reporting. With real-time access to daily or weekly information, your staff becomes instantly more productive, acting on the information as it happens.

Data Analysis — As You Like It Different software packages offer varying levels of business intelligence. Some businesses prefer a graphical representation of their performance, while others prefer a more linear view. However, one thing is clear: business owners today need the capability to see key metrics when they want, how they want, and in the format they require. They also need to delve deeper when further analysis is required.

Some ERP systems now encourage 'on-the-spot' reporting, allowing for mini reports to be created on screen quickly and easily. This functionality is offered by some of the latest business software packages and is made possible through multi-filtering on any screen within the system. You can accomplish much more, much faster when you can quickly and easily get the information you need to make decisions on the spot. This instant reporting capability is very useful when reporting on sales orders, purchases, or nominal ledger, but it also allows you to investigate deeper when situations need further analysis.

Business metrics are a resource management tool that can offer a wide range of pre-configured metrics that can be placed anywhere within your system. For example, complementary category metrics can show when opportunities are being missed. This feature can analyze products to see which are typically sold together and which customers aren't buying these complementary items. Your sales team can then pick up on any opportunities to boost profitability.

Business Tools for Smart Businesses Up-to-date, accurate information is the backbone of your most important decisions. It shouldn't be difficult to access, hard to use, or inaccessible when you're out of the office. The days of 'making do' are gone. If you aren't getting what you need from your system, you're seriously missing out.

Highly effective business software systems can provide smarter, more usable information that can significantly improve your profitability, revenue growth, stock management, and productivity.