The CIO’s guide to boosting corporate performance using business intelligence solutions

Digital economy, along with accelerated digital transformation has enabled business across all industries to be data-driven, and perhaps, more importantly, customer-centric. Various digital tools and platforms deployed by enterprises allow companies to collect data, which then can be used to derive valuable insight to serve customers better.

Though in theory it’s a straightforward concept, it is far more complicated in practise. Business leaders are now inundated with all sorts of data coming in from various sources such as social media listening, customer sentiment analysis, net promoter scores, and customer surveys among other things. This oversaturation and deluge of data have led to what is being referred to as ‘data fatigue,’ whereby data has grown too big to be useful.

However, at the same time, organizations can’t afford to neglect data and insights. Thus, they need to filter out the noise and focus on the valuable data to improve customer experiences and drive growth. In other words, companies need to adopt business intelligence (BI) solutions to transform their data analytics.

Unfortunately, a 2018 Gartner report published in 2018 claims that businesses are slow to adopt transformative analytical tools despite it being the top investment priority among CIOs the year before. A staggering 91 percent of organizations surveyed have yet to reach a transformational level when it comes to deployment of analytical tools. Nick Heudecker, research vice president at Gartner, said that organizations ought to be doing better, given the obvious potential benefits.

“Organizations at transformational levels of maturity enjoy increased agility, better integration with partners and suppliers, and easier use of advanced predictive and prescriptive forms of analytics. This all translates to competitive advantage and differentiation,” he said.

Practical benefits of business intelligence solutions

Properly deployed BI solutions will transform an organization in many ways. Here are some of the main advantages of adopting a BI application, infrastructure, tools and business strategy, the sum of which leverages analytics and insights.

• Smarter decision making – It is crucial for business leaders to have the latest and most relevant data on their companies on hand all times. BI tools liberate data that is trapped in disparate silos, and convert them into structured and valuable insight sources, which will allow companies to make more informed business and strategic decisions, without the guesswork.
• Increased sales and revenue – Among many metrics that can be measured and tracked, BI tools could also monitor customer activity and trends, when integrated with a customer relationship manager (CRM) solution. This extra knowledge can be powerful for any sales team to generate solid leads, pitch more strategically and ultimately increase conversion rate
• Enhance customer experience – As competition among businesses heats up, brands are shifting their focus to provide enhanced customer experiences to get ahead of others. Having all customer data in one platform with a single pane to monitor multiple touch-points in real-time will come especially handy to deliver better customer experience.
• Improve data accuracy and compliance – A proper BI solution allows companies to be more in control of their data. Centralized, structured and uninformed data formats ensure security protocol and accesses are efficiently enforced while at the same time complying with the local privacy regulations.
• Boost productivity – Successful organizations are generally productive, because they regularly eliminate inefficient processes, revamp and refine existing methods and implement continual improvements to their workflows. BI tools will make all of these improvements possible thanks to automated, accurate reporting and real-time dashboards.

Understandably, picking an ideal BI solution could be a challenging task for any business leader today given the sheer amount vendors that are promising the sky (and the moon), while tossing in buzzwords such as AI and ML into the mix. In addition to finding the right tool, multiple other factors such as scalability, price, interoperability, and integration capability must be taken into account.

Thus, TechHQ has picked the top two BI solutions in the market that businesses should consider, to optimize their analytical capability and yield insights to drive real, transformative changes and boost corporate performance:

CALUMO

CALUMO, one of the world’s leading business intelligence and corporate performance management solutions, topped 11 categories in The BI Survey 2018 report. After reviewing the software, we believe there are seven reasons behind its acclaim:

1. Robust Planning, Budgeting, and Forecasting: This all-in-one integrated solution provides Corporate Performance Management solutions incorporating the best of Business Intelligence and Analytics with robust Planning, Budgeting and forecasting.
2. Seamless Microsoft Integration: it’s built on the industry-standard Microsoft Data Management platform and integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Office Excel, PowerPoint, and Word.
3. Built for Finance People: CALUMO can be accessed on any browser capable device and is designed with finance professionals, and the business people they serve, clearly in mind.

And that’s just the beginning. CALUMO helps organisations Predict, Shape and Achieve their best financial futures.

4. Predict: Businesses can Predict through traditional and emerging methods including machine learning;
5. Shape: Via a range of reporting and feedback tools including dashboards, scorecards, analytics, and traditional reporting;
6. Achieve: through a continuous narrative linking envisioned outcomes with actual results.
7. Single Application Solution: CALUMO is a single application solution, and a single version of the enterprise encompasses ERP, CRM HRMS and a full range of data from other operational systems.

With flexible deployment options – in the cloud or on-premise – the fast, secure solution enables companies to automate every day, high-value tasks allowing business leaders to focus on their team and business. For more information on CALUMO’s cutting edge BI solutions and tools, please click here to find out more on the website or read the full profile here.

ORACLE

The solution that comes closest to matching the features of CALUMO’s offering is Oracle Business Intelligence 12c. It also offers an integrated platform to standardize and centralize all your data which simplifies your business analytics strategy, while at the same time yielding a comprehensive representation of your operations.

Further, the modern and advanced analytics platform provides key decision-makers with quick answers to predictive and statistical questions, in addition to enabling the creation of mash-up data sets by running R scripts in batch mode. Other than that, companies could also choose from hundreds of pre-built functions to perform rapid analysis or opt to extend existing analytics with R scripts without hassle.

With Oracle’s solutions, the power to craft a story around your business is in safe hands, with the availability of stunning visuals from a rich library that could uncover previously unseen data or trends. With enhanced mobile functions, you can literally talk to your data – as the solution is voice-optimized – and ask questions to yield visual responses.

Most importantly, the solution can be deployed across your organization with a minimal onboarding process and scaled to your needs as adoption increases. Business leaders can securely access their own data or blend local and corporate data for more in-depth insights and thus uncover new opportunities.

*Some of the companies featured in this article are commercial partners of TechHQ