Business Intelligence The Right Way, with QlikView
Posted by Joe Maume on Mon, May 21, 2012 @ 09:48 AM
Don't let not having a good grasp on business intelligence hold your business back. If you find you have multiple reports with the same purpose but with different and often conflicting data, understanding and effectively utilising business intelligence can help you greatly. I read an article entitled End The Chaos: A Better Approach to Business Intelligence on the Harvard Business Review which explains very well how business intelligence can solve this problem for you.
"The proliferation of multiple reports with the same purpose, yet containing different data, results in divergent and often-contradictory interpretations. Business executives are unaware of the extent to which their staffs routinely reinvent the wheel to get the information they need. It's a hidden cost, and a growing one.
Increasingly it's not just the number-crunchers in your organization who use information. Everyone from product managers, to call center reps, to the front-line worker in the branch or store uses information to make decisions. The bad news is that these knowledge workers are unaware of colleagues who share the same reporting needs, and who might have already created meaningful reports.
The good news is that as information usage increases business intelligence tools are building support for communities of users. So called "collaborative BI tools" offer a way to access, view, refine, and comment on existing reports. Thus a broad audience of users can build and maintain re-usable reports on a common platform. This promises not only economies of scale — fewer people searching for information only to create reports that already exist — but smarter decision making through the exchange of ideas.
Collaborative BI tools apply social networking features to allow people to share goals and evolve their thinking in real-time. When Bill in Finance generates his monthly Top Line report, Craig in Marketing can leave a comment on the "Revenue" column inquiring, "Is this billed revenue or booked revenue?" thus inviting Bill to annotate his report. And in a Web 2.0 world people can get and stay connected. Craig no longer needs to wait for Bill to email his revisions. Instead he can be notified of Bill's updates from his smartphone or tablet".
Effective collaboration among employees is crucial to completing tasks in a timely manner, as it helps employees carry out new meaningful tasks rather than repeat ones previously done by other employees. Having a collaborative BI tool like QlikView can also help new employees avoid repeating previously done work and allows them to see what reports have been done by current and previous employees. A key advantage of QlikView is that it allows businesses to benefit from the wisdom of crowds as it makes decision making more collaborative.
If you want to implement QlikView to help improve your business contact QlikPower
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