Suppliers and distributors generate volumes of data every day. This data is becoming critical to help firms understand how well their businesses are doing, and more importantly, what they can do to improve. Some have called data the modern-day currency, and in a recent report by Capgemini, 61% of 1,000 surveyed C-suite and senior decision-makers indicated that data is now a driver of revenues and is becoming as valuable to their businesses as their products and services.
The challenge for many firms is turning the raw data coming in from various parts of the business into actionable insights. A robust BI system can provide unprecedented new insights for decision makers and have a positive impact on a company’s growth by helping reduce costs, identify new opportunities, develop targeted strategies and make data-driven decisions. If your firm is hitting an information roadblock caused by your current analytics or underperforming enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, it may be time to consider a BI tool for your business. Below are seven signs that your business may need a new BI system:
- Your family-owned or multi-generational firm continues to do things the way they’ve always been done. And, now it feels like it’s struggling to compete in today’s tech-savvy environment. It’s import to evaluate your legacy environment to determine if your business is being held back by outdated systems and practices.
- You know what your customers are buying, but you don’t know what they aren’t buying. What revenues is your company missing out on if your sales team not looking to enhance sales among existing customers with cross-selling and upselling opportunities? Understanding what your customers are not buying may identify challenges in products and services, or it could reveal important information about your sales team’s knowledge of your product universe.
- Sales data is only available monthly and/or annually and only in a range of pre-determined formats. Sales happen every day, and your team will be better armed to care for customers when they have up-to-date reports and the ability to dig into the data in a variety of ways.
- Sales data queries and requests for reports are typically made through Information Technology (IT) personnel or another indirect source. Your IT team likely has its hands full keeping your technology infrastructure running optimally, so creating reports may not be their focus or the best use of your time.
- Your system is very sales-oriented and offers little or no reporting in such areas as inventory or purchasing. All areas of your business should be working together and not operating in silos. How much inventory you have on your shelves impacts whether or not your sales team can meet customers needs when they place orders. The ability to see the various data points side by side will enhance your efficiencies and keep your various departments in sync.
- It can take days or weeks to run reports. If this is a real problem at your business, then your sales teams, and the departments that support them, are at an extreme disadvantage. Your business is operating in real-time, and to effectively use data to improve your business, you need access to real-time reports.
- Your company’s ERP system was originally installed in the 1980s-1990s, when floppy disks ruled the day. While the system may have served your company well over the years, it is probably taking more and more effort to keep it running, and it likely doesn’t play nice with more current tools such as marketing automation or CRM systems, or cloud-based solutions and mobile apps. Your modern team needs a more modern intelligence solution.
According to the 2016 National Association of Electrical Distributors Technology Benchmarking Survey, 100% of all distributors identified the need to ensure that data in our business system is accurate and up to date as a top priority. Unfortunately, because of outdated legacy systems, companies may not fully understand their business performance, sales trends, or customer behavior. For many small and mid-size companies in the wholesale distribution segment, which are often family-owned and multi-generational, the ERP systems they’re using to collect, store, and manage their company’s range of data were often built 20-30 years ago, before the advent of the Internet and the marketplace’s subsequent explosion into the digital age. The demands of a modern business require tools, such as BI systems that can respond in real-time, and that make it easy to aggregate and analyze data so you are ideally positioned to make more informed, strategic business decisions.
Jamie Brooks
Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Phocas Software