Business Analytics Strategies: To Generate Excellent Results

1
Business Analytics Strategies To Generate
Excellent Results
Inside Info
2
Businesses are constantly facing different
challenges every day, whether this be greater
competition, lower profit margins, more demands
from customers or declining sales.  For
businesses to grow efficiently its important to
understand what areas of the business are
performing and those that arent. Business
analytics or using business intelligence  is
about assisting organisations to integrate and
consolidate data from all their operational
processes and daily interactions.  Then
delivering this information in a simple form,
whether this is a dashboard, drill down analysis
or report, to those that need it, when they need
it, to better understand whats happening and why
its happening, to make more informed business
decisions.  
3
Here are some key strategies to apply when
looking at business analytics Daily analysis of
customer buying behavior  Apply an additional
level of scrutiny to analyse demand to identify
those products with significant upward or
downward trends. The forecast of these items
could be adjusted to reflect shifts in product
preference as consumers make trade-offs in price,
package size quantities and value versus premium
offerings. Optimise your product mix and
emphasise value  Understanding product
performance and tying this back to a profit
impact is a critical component of a business
intelligence system.  Marketing can then assess
the right product mix to push based on the type
of customer this attracts.  Consider a preference
towards value-based product lines and position
them to grab market share from competitors by
appealing to the more cost-conscious buyers
without devaluing products through well-timed
pricing initiatives and bundled offerings.
4
A fluid approach to inventory management A fluid
approach to inventory management is required when
demand fluctuations occur, which is also a direct
result of the type of business analytics system
you use.  Its not good enough for forecast or
demand changes to take days or even weeks to be
reflected in distribution, production,
procurement and transportation plans. Its
important that managers can quickly see for
themselves whats going on and adapt to any
demand changes as needed.  Stock movements should
be analysed daily in light of orders, product
mix, locations, margin and individual customers,
aligning back to achievement of key targets. 
Its then easy to identify those products that
are trending upwards as opposed to those to
de-emphasise.  Understand your profit at a
customer or sales rep/region level  Most
businesses understand their top line profit
margins, but find it more difficult to measure
this at a transactional level whether this be
by sales rep, store or region, customer or even
at an invoice line level.  Some business
analytics tools find it difficult to maintain
fast query performance when analysing at these
levels, especially when data volumes increase, so
make sure you look for a tool that can handle
this type of analysis.
5
Ensure IT are empowering the business to make
faster decisions not being a roadblock Theres
a definite shift away from IT centric reporting
approaches across all sizes of organisations
towards business user-led analysis solutions
called Data Discovery business intelligence.
 Data Discovery tools like QlikView make it
easier for business users to understand what has
happened, why its happening and what action is
required to be taken.  Theyre characterised by
rapid prototyping, being simple to use and manage
and can be delivered in a matter of weeks rather
than months or years.  In the Finance analytic
space, there has always been a strong need to
move beyond manual, Excel based approaches to
processes such as budgeting, forecasting and
financial reporting.  However, the viable
solutions for mid-size and enterprise
organisations have for many been out of reach on
a cost basis. Cloud based applications that
Finance can own  and maintain in a simpler way
are making a system based approach to these
Finance processes affordable and therefore
driving projects.
6
Proper implementation of these strategies can
help your business to flourish. Effective use of
Business intelligence software  supports each of
these strategies and may give you an upper-hand
in the market.
7
Thank You
Inside Info
Telephone [phone] Email
info_at_insideinfo.com.au Head Office Level 8, 75
Miller St, North Sydney, NSW 2060 Australia