3 Steps to Becoming an Analytics-Driven Organization

Here's a startling fact: There are more businesses who don't yet use a comprehensive business intelligence (BI) solution than those who do. These companies aren't necessarily clueless or underperformers. Many large, international companies are at this stage. Rather, they're using the same sorts of management information systems today as they did 20 years ago: standard reports produced via their ERP systems and static analyses created in Excel. Newsflash: this isn't business intelligence.

Speaking in natural language into your phone and watching an analysis come to life in real time is: that's just the beginning. But to get from Point A to Point B isn't something that happens overnight.

It's a three-step journey that takes companies from basic BI to building new strategies by looking outside the company and tapping into the available ocean of data. That's what we call being analytics-driven.

The journey progresses along with the increasing amount and complexity of data able to be analyzed. The depth of analytics grows throughout the organization, spurring more frequent data discovery and improved analytical skill sets.

Progression along the path toward the data-driven business is also one of cultural transformation. Decision-making processes across the organization become more strategic and fact-based.

Step 1: Harnessing the power of your data

The first step on the journey toward data-driven performance is a significant one: getting access to your data. With a BI solution, you can tap into the highly valuable knowledge that was already at your feet but was hard to crack into due to a cumbersome IT process.

With the right BI platform, you can get up and running almost instantly with acceleration packages. Pre-built data stores come standard and users experience easy adoption with pre-defined reports, dashboards, and analyses.