Reporting & Business Intelligence
The right dashboards for the right stakeholders? What sounds like a marketing message is the basis for a shared understanding of KPIs and analytics.
In order to be able to make data-driven decisions, specialist departments and management need reports tailored to them - and that is why business intelligence is such an important part of the data strategy.
Not only must the data be structured and prepared, but also the visualization of it - because with a good dashboard, it is immediately clear how figures are developing and what forecasts for the future look like.
Why do companies need reporting and business intelligence?
Make data-driven decisions
In order for a company to move away from gut decisions to data-driven decisions, you need business intelligence. Because BI comprises a wide range of technologies and methods, from organizing and analyzing data to reporting on results.
Intelligent reporting and personalized reports
Reports should be tailored to the respective target group, as well as marketing-News. Because a data scientist needs different information than someone from the HR or finance sector! Reports must therefore be tailored to stakeholders and the most important information must be visible at a glance.
Visually process data
Visualization is a big part of business intelligence. When data is presented well visually, this increases the understanding of specialist departments and stakeholders — immensely important in order to increase the priority for data and a data culture to establish. Visualizing data is almost an art, because you have to pay attention to a lot of things.
Gain a competitive advantage
BI reporting serves as a bridge that turns raw, often scattered, and unstructured data into insights that drive strategic decision-making in an organization. This transformation is possible through specialized tools, advanced technologies, and appealing visualizations that breathe life into figures and data.
This is how we go about establishing Reporting & BI
From audit to strategy and implementation to enablement of all employees — together, we create the basis for big data and data-driven decisions.
Status check - the audit
As a first step in building reporting and business intelligence, we analyze the company's existing maturity level in terms of data — our Data Audit. In doing so, we identify the first use cases for dashboards and reports, which we develop and implement in further cooperation. In doing so, we include the weak points and requirements of the company.
Development of a BI strategy
Based on the audit, we develop a business intelligence strategy tailored to the company, which takes into account both short-term and long-term goals. To do this, we also examine the tool stack and involve the relevant stakeholders and the entire data department. Because a strategy must culture and organization fit.
Data integration and preparation
The next step is to implement the strategy: To this end, the relevant data sources are integrated and a consistent and reliable database is established. This data is structured and cleaned so that it is suitable for processing in dashboards. This includes the implementation of Data Governance-Guidelines.
Implementation of reporting and BI solutions
Now it's time to build your first dashboards! At The Data Institute, we recommend software that suits the respective company and is state-of-the-art - because there is little worse than implementing software that is no longer modern a little later and fits the rest of the tech stack. The dashboards and reports must be adapted to the respective stakeholders.
Enabling stakeholders
The newly created reports and BI solutions are then presented to the respective stakeholders and adapted if further requests arise.
Reporting and BI in our framework
We always work with the organization, culture and architecture framework.
Because in our opinion, these 3 areas are the most important factors for successfully anchoring data in the company in the long term.
Reporting and business intelligence must also be included in this framework. Access to relevant data is an important step towards increasing awareness of data that architecture describes the tools and systems that are necessary for BI and in the organization It states what responsibilities and structures look like with regard to the use of data.
The Data Institute — the strong partner for the use of reporting and business intelligence
See data at a glance and make decisions based on these? That is the goal that we want to achieve as advice to our customers. Quick impact, but at the same time long-term strategies that make companies sustainable and successful.
What is a data audit anyway?
Business intelligence (abbreviated BI) describes the process of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data from various sources. The goal: make decisions and strategies based on data! Because that is exactly what makes a data-driven company stand out.
There is no fixed process for business intelligence. Because this area is always dependent on the level of maturity of the company and therefore on the current situation, goals, organizational form and culture. It covers data analysis, data visualization and reporting (e.g. through dashboards). The focus of reporting is on providing decision makers with the necessary information within an organization so that they are supported in their work and make their decisions dependent on data.
Business intelligence helps companies gain competitive advantages, increase efficiency, and drive growth by making informed decisions based on data.
Who needs business intelligence and reporting?
Since well-prepared reports and dashboards ensure that stakeholders gain valuable insights into their data, it is necessary for almost all areas.
Clear dashboards help management monitor the overall performance of the company, make strategic decisions and manage business goals, in the area of Finance Reports have been helping to manage budgets and create forecasts for a long time. However, reporting also supports areas that are less number-driven, for example, HR managers can manage employee data, carry out performance evaluations and make personnel-related decisions, service quality can be assessed in customer service and customer feedback can be analyzed.
Dashboards have also become an integral part of production, as reporting can be used to monitor process efficiency and optimize supply chains.
And finally, that is also marketing and sales are grateful when they see their results presented in dashboards to understand customer behavior and adjust their marketing and sales strategies.
Who is involved in reporting and business intelligence?
Since reporting and business intelligence affect so many areas, these divisions are also involved in setting up the company.
When working with customers, as The Data Institute, we focus on involving all relevant stakeholders in decisions. We therefore talk to the data department to evaluate the level of maturity and thus also the options, understand the systems and tools and recognize the connections between previous business intelligence. We then interview management to set the strategic goals for the BI and reporting system and, on this basis, develop a strategy that fits the corporate strategy.
In the next step, we develop use cases together with the various specialist departments so that they receive personalized dashboards that are suitable for them.
It is important to precisely record the requirements and to understand which KPIs and analyses the respective specialist departments want. These conversations often also reveal things that fall within the area of data governance, namely the harmonization of key performance indicators.
What services can be combined withReporting & Business Intelligence?
Case studies on the subjectReporting & Business Intelligence
You can find suitable examples of our work on this topic in the following case studies:
Knowledge around Reporting & Business Intelligence
In addition to case studies, we also have various blog articles on the topic:
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