In today’s competitive market place, those that pay attention to the details in their business will be the ones that survive during hard times, and excel during great times. Business Intelligence (BI) is the tool that will give small companies a competitive advantage during the next decade and there a many compelling reasons why small businesses should make it a priority to invest in an integrated Excel-based BI solution sooner rather than later. Over the next few weeks, I will provide just 5 reasons why small businesses need BI.
REASON NO. 1:
Automation is, by definition, a method of controlling a particular process in order to increase reliability and efficiency, often through reducing human intervention to a minimum. And small businesses, by nature, need to get more done with fewer people! Improved company performance comes from saving money and ensuring that your workforce spend their time as effectively as possible. An integrated BI solution introduces automated reporting processes to small businesses, drawing data from your accounting package, upon request, thereby eliminating manual report preparation and repetitive data extracts, automating spreadsheets and providing you with up-to-date, accurate and well-presented reports for informed decision-making in your business. The automation of the traditional financial reporting process not only improves efficiencies, saving accounting / bookkeeping staff valuable hours each month, but maintains data integrity and provides accurate and timeous information in a meaningful format. There is also no longer a need to manually sort through static reports and recompile data into a format that can be used to analyze information. By providing real-time reports on demand, BI plays a significant role in creating time-savings and increased productivity and allows you to start using the information in your system to more effectively manage the business.
