What are Business Analytics and Insights about and why are they relevant to your business?
In its simplest form, Business Analytics is concerned with getting information to decision-makers to enable good decision making. Insights are about providing information that gives a unique or new way of looking at your organisation. By combining these two approaches, we can make good decisions and provide new opportunities that were not previously visible to us.
There are several different levels within the Business Analytics Maturity Model (BAMM) ranging from a retrospective looking at what happened within your business through. The next level considers why things happened within the business. Following from this is ‘Predictive Analytics’ where Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be used to predict what is likely to happen if we take no action. The final level on the BAMM uses AI to help us make this happen, this Prescriptive Analytics enables us to make changes within the business to enable a business opportunity.
From this broad range of basic reporting to instructing and forecasting business opportunity, it is obvious that all organisations are on the BAMM at some point and therefore are currently on a Business Analytics journey. The question for many companies is “Where are we on the Business Analytics Maturity Model and where do we want to be?”. Ignoring this question allows your direct competitors and potentially other alternative industry to out-manoeuvre you in the market.
When we begin working with clients, we first ensure we select the relevant aspect of their business to add value to. Once this has been established, we assess the Business Analytics Maturity Model (BAMM) to ensure a clear final state is agreed upon. Performing a GAP analysis creates a list of tasks that can then be prioritised. This forms the basis of the Project in which roles, deliverables & budget is defined.
Many companies currently have reporting solutions in place and are comfortable with them so may wonder if they need to change these. In truth, the answer is dependent on the quality of current tools being used and the clients final state that they are looking to achieve. Using Excel to provide you with a review of what has happened in your business last month is still an adequate solution for many businesses. However, if your competitors are using AI to predict changes in the market, it’s unlikely that Excel will allow you to remain competitive.
Moving up levels in the BAMM and entering a state of continuous improvement to ensure you remain relevant will require you to develop internal resources capable of adapting and reacting. However, for most companies getting this journey started without external specialist support and a business change project initiated, often means money being spent on new tools with little or no deliverables being achieved.
At Appsure IT, we use Business Analysis skills to ensure that any Analytics project is aligned to business goals. This ensures that the key business problems and challenges are within scope for the project to deliver. Many other data analytics companies may focus on implementing their preferred Analytics platform and deliver generic visuals that are not linked to the business requirements.
Business Analytics is not simply for large companies. Many small-to-medium sized companies may feel they know what’s happening within their company as they are small enough to “feel what’s going on”. This may be true for simple metrics like cash in the bank, but can the money being spent on social media be analysed against new prospects, or which social media platform brings the highest paying customers? Only by putting in place good, relevant metrics and considering your Business Analytics strategy can you realistically expect to drive these aspects of your business forward.
If you want to hear more about our Business Analytics services and how they can support your business, simply email contact@appsureit.com or use the below form and we can book a free consultation.