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Depending on who you speak with, Business Intelligence (BI) can mean reporting, scorecards, KPI’s, data warehousing, or any number of other tools—but what does it really mean for your business? At its core, business intelligence is about providing business insight that allows you to position your resources to create the greatest impact. To do that, BI should provide insights that can act as a focal point for business decisions.
Let’s break it down…In my role with Projectline, I am tasked with helping develop new business. Like all business development managers, I have goals for revenue growth, new business development, and the care and feeding of existing business. These goals aren’t mutually exclusive, but my time is limited. At the end of the day, business intelligence, for me, helps analyze the best way to spend my time to accomplish the goals we’ve mutually set forth. How do I measure my success? I can look at the number of sales calls and meetings as one metric.
How often have we heard “sales is a numbers game”? While in its simplest form this may have a lot of truth, it takes on a new (more powerful) meaning if I can determine the areas that will provide the greatest amount of growth relative to sales effort and overall cost of sales. What will provide long term sustainable growth as opposed to short term revenue gains with little or no possibility for future revenue? What changes are going on in my customer’s business that require me to refocus my efforts? In an idealistic sales environment, I would make calls on everyone who is ready to purchase and is biased towards purchasing what my company has to offer. While I most likely will never find this sales utopia, I can refine my focus based on the business intelligence gathered from a combination of my CRM system, outside research, and collaboration with my colleagues and business network.
In order for business intelligence to be meaningful, it must start with the overall goals of the company or organization. From these come divisional goals and ultimately personal goals that map back to the organizational goals. When business intelligence is highly mature in an organization, it encourages collaboration and provides an incentive for positive changes in behavior. Business insight helps to overcome our personal bias and tendency to be overconfident in forecasting or making assumptions about our business. Finally, if you can map compensation back to these personal metrics, you are on your way to the holy grail: having everyone contributing and supporting overall corporate goals.
Questions about BI? Feel free to contact me at brianh@projectlineinc.com.