If, as a decision-maker, you’re wondering what Business Intelligence could do for you, you’ve come to the right place!
“Business Intelligence”—what an impressive term, yet it’s actually very easy to understand. It refers to all the tools and processes that will allow you to easily analyze your company’s data.
Indeed, analyzing data has become essential for managing business performance.
But what exactly is business intelligence? What are the benefits for your digital services company?
We’ll explain!
What is Business Intelligence?
The English term “Business Intelligence” translates to “informatique décisionnelle” in French. At first glance, this term may seem complex, but it is actually very simple. It refers to the set of tools and processes that will allow you to easily analyze your company’s data.
At that moment, you’re thinking about your dashboards, visualizations, graphs and reports, which you spend hours and hours creating and then studying.
Well, that’s where the magic of BI comes in, as it harnesses your data, on demand, by cross-referencing it to extract value.
Where once you had to enter all your data into your Excel spreadsheet and then consolidate them to obtain results, BI automatically captures data according to your different activities to create reports.
Roughly speaking, the data comes from the various software programs you use and from integrated data.
Business Intelligence can take many forms: mobile BI, real-time BI, operational BI, cloud BI, SaaS BI, open-source BI, business reporting, online analytical processing (OLAP), data analysis, and collaborative BI.
How does Business Intelligence work?
The data is stored in what we call a “datamart” or “datawarehouse”. This may be historical data or data that has just been integrated. These data will be consolidated to form indicators that will be presented in a report. This will take the form of a table and/or graph and will answer the following questions:
- “What happened? “,
- “Why did this happen? “,
- “What’s going to happen? “,
- “What’s happening right now? “,
- “What should happen? “.
How Can Business Intelligence Benefit Your Digital Services Company?
Whether you’re a large, medium, or small digital company, BI helps you manage your business. Why? Because data is the foundation of a company’s growth and the essence of strategic decision-making.
As mentioned earlier, BI correlates different data sets, allowing you to analyze the results and make the necessary decisions. The strength of this tool lies in the fact that the data is nearly real-time or fully real-time.
The reports produced by BI enable you to track your Key Performance Indic ators (KPIs). In addition to the classic indicators of costs, expenses, revenues and therefore profitability, you can also create your own decision-making indicators.
This naturally leads to greater responsiveness in your business management, and in the monitoring of your customers and activities.
Your ability to analyze your market, its trends and your positioning will give you a competitive edge.
In short, having BI allows you to:
- A more precise and relevant reporting tool.
- Eliminate human error by automating data collection, consolidation, modeling and retrieval.
- Automate your reporting.
- Help you make decisions, and save time in the decision-making process.
ERP and Business Intelligence
ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) enables data to be centralized via a single information system, accessible to all ESN functions: sales, HR, CFO, sales, etc.
By becoming a link in a single chain, ERP and business intelligence can reinforce the decision-making system.
ERP becomes a source of data for BI and meets the reporting needs of decision-makers.
Because the database is centralized, other departments within the service company also have access to the information.
Whereas previously each department analyzed data related to its own specific activities, the ERP-BI combination makes it possible to leverage data derived from the integration of the company’s entire operations (customer relationship management, billing, human resources, etc.).
In this way, Business Intelligence will combine several pieces of information integrated within the ERP system and deliver them at the right time: invoicing, purchase orders, payment, etc.
This process will enable us to carry out predictive analyses, adapt strategies and better understand customer and employee needs.
VSActivity: The Business Intelligence Solution for Digital Services Companies
There are many tools available to exploit Data. So you need to identify the one that suits you best.
The VSActivity SaaS ERP offers business-oriented business intelligence with KPIs tailored to service companies (digital services firms, IT services firms) and consulting firms. Numerous reports combining tables and charts are available in each module of the software (recruitment, HR, CRM, business, operations, sales, billing, purchasing, finance, etc.).
VSA offers you “real-time” reporting to facilitate your decision-making without any time lag in data processing.
For example, by using operational, sales, and recruitment metrics, you can optimize your resources and maximize the profitability of your business—including assignments and projects.
On the administrative side, you’ll have a comprehensive overview of all your approval and billing processes, allowing you to analyze, in particular, outstanding balances and customer payment timelines in order to implement appropriate solutions (reminders, factoring, etc.).
Conclusion on Business Intelligence at the Heart of Digital Services Companies
Data is at the heart of the enterprise. A good visualization of your data allows you to implement the most appropriate strategy for your situation.
When combined with a tool such as an ERP system, Business Intelligence enables the implementation of a more accurate and reliable decision-making process.
In fact, all historical data integrated into the ERP database will feed into the reporting process.
The decision-making process within the IT services company is therefore faster, higher quality and even predictive.
Get real-time financial reports for your digital services agency with VSActivity
In the VSA (VSActivity) software, you can review your operating accounts by comparing them to the same period last year or by viewing the month-by-month trend in your earnings.
