Business Intelligence systems offer limitless possibilities for promoting operational efficiency but BI can also have a dramatic impact on revenue growth.  It doesn’t require a huge investment in software but a well thought out strategy for getting information out of the data warehouse and in front of  decision makers. How exactly is this a catalyst for business growth? Here are two ideas:

1. A single version of the truth delivered every single day. This means that every executive, manager and their staff are looking at the same numbers every time they discuss the numbers. Managers will implement their own spreadsheet and paper based systems to fill a reporting void and to prove that what they are doing is working. However, as these systems evolve, they deviate from the numbers from other divisions. The aggregated corporate financial figures become an abstract construct irrelevant to day to day business activities. Worse, there are labour intensive manual processes behind putting together these reports, meaning that the data is compiled and analysed less often, the calculations are error prone and employees are distracted from higher value activities.

A single version of the truth delivered daily, in BI parlance, is a set of numbers, condensed into an easy to consume and visually appealing report, that represent the key metrics that are driving the business. The figures will vary depending on the industry and management style, but examples are bookings, goods delivered, revenue run-rate, cash burn, customers served, etc., for a few different time periods (daily, month to date, year to date), perhaps also alongside the variance from forecasted amounts. As the report is automatically generated and published, it can be delivered every single day without incurring any incremental costs. This is not a dashboard with hundreds of metrics, but a handful of key tables and graphs that can be viewed on a tablet or smartphone, representing what really moves the business forward. Links can be provided to drill down into further details if necessary, but that level of analysis is a separate activity. The daily single version of the truth is simple enough to consume quickly and keeps the management team focused on the key metrics that are on the path to achieving the primary business goals.

2. The best next sales prospects: who, what, where, how. This is sales figures analysis across several dimensions: customers, geography, channel, SKU, etc. and looking for avenues for revenue growth. There are two parts to the analysis. The first is knowing the customer data better. This alone is powerful as the data has to be collected from many different systems. Having a holistic view of the client base allows sales leaders to confirm their hunches and develop a stronger intuition about the best sales prospects and where sales and marketing budgets should be spent. It also makes it clear who are the most important customers to the business.

The second part of the analysis is to turn the numbers into action by making comparisons across dimensions, identifying the gaps and asking questions. For example, if a product is overwhelmingly popular in one country, then it what other similar countries is there an opportunity to sell the same product? If sales are weak in a region, is it because a key distributor has been ignored or just that no attention has every been paid to that market? At what rate is the business winning orders from a quote or estimate? How does this vary by product, region or type of customer? Where are the lagging distributors or sales reps located? Can we hypothesize that they lagging because of underinvestment in sales support, a strong competitor, or the  pricing is wrong for that market? What are the common characteristics of geographies where sales are growing? What products could be bundled together at minimal expense to deliver greater value to the customer? Analysis and questioning the data will produce a sales and business development strategy based on evidence, not anecdotes or hunches about what should work.

There are many other scenarios where BI can assist in overcoming business challenges, but these two stand out as directly related to growing revenue. Putting these ideas into practice does not require bleeding edge software or complicated data science. It is simply using the data that you have to make evidence based business decisions.

A good case study that touches on these points and a few others can be found in this case study by Senturus.