Business Intelligence: Understanding your business with EVX Software
Business Intelligence is the array of analysis, strategies, and tools used to manage business information, it is not new but with an increasing number of tools and information available, we might be living in the golden age of BI. But what's inside this? What do we need to jump into this wagon? And how much effort would it take me to implement BI?
Let's delve into some of these questions.
Reports for Environmental Consulting and Engineering Firms with EVX Software
First of all, Business Intelligence is not a one-time solution, it's not supposed to give us a magic wand to fix all our company's problems and increase revenue in the blink of an eye. On the contrary, it is a never-ending process of analyzing, refining, and understanding the data. Different people can see the same numbers but get a different conclusion from them, and that is where all the magic happens, a good analyst knows it's not a train stop on the way to success.
Business Intelligence term was first mentioned by Richard Millar Devens' Cyclopædia of Commercial and Business Anecdotes (1865), so as we said it's nothing new. In summary, BI is the "art" of taking different pieces of business data, processing it, converting it into information, and analyzing it to take executive actions, orient the business practice, and optimize to achieve the goals proposed. So, how do we do it?
Business Intelligence tools
We could use a different approach depending on our industry or vertical, but in general Business Intelligence tools include Reports, Business KPIs, Data Mining, Business performance management, Benchmarking, and different types of analysis (predictive, prescriptive among others).
So we have data from our daily practice, and the key aspect of BI is to determine the analysis method, data gathering, and collection and display of said data. Here is where comprehensive Project Management tools come into play.
The Project Management Software role
The main advantage of Project Management software is the recollection of data, if you use several platforms is more difficult to gather important information and analyze it correctly, because, picture this, if you have your Billing and Invoicing in one software, your timesheets and expenses in a spreadsheet somewhere, and the payments tracking in another, to collect them all in one single place is crucial for report efficiency and accuracy, so having your data spread around would make it harder. With a Project manager software like EVX Software, you can have everything under one roof, from the quotes and tasks for your team to the time entries, expenses, and charges to be billed and invoiced. Cool stuff really, with just a couple of clicks you can get a comprehensive report ready to be analyzed by your team increasing the revenue by reducing the collection time.
The right KPIs
In one of our previous articles, we discussed the importance of a good set of KPIs, specifically ones that tell a story about YOUR business. You can read everything about the reports and KPIs here.
You should select your KPIs based on your specific needs, as different businesses and industries have unique indicators. So for example, if you have a lot of field work your traveling time is important to your team's efficiency, and therefore you should have the mileage as a billable expense if your project(s) is(are) Time and Materials or taken into account if you have a Fixed Fee project. But if on the other hand, your job is done on-site, or remotely, you don't have that specific indicator so there is no need to be tracked. Everything and anything can be tracked, don't get overwhelmed by picking too many things as important to you, select, divide, and conquer, especially if you are starting with Reports or Business Intelligence.
What do we need?
For starters, a good and comprehensive Project Management Software like EVX Software, specially designed for Environmental Consulting and Engineering Firms, integrates all your data sources so you can track what's important to you and your business. This kind of software provides a broad array of reports to help you understand what's going on in your business and/or your specific project. You can track the time entries, the task completion rate, and the performance of your team in many dimensions. If you want to know more about EVX Software please book a demo with us here.
How much effort would it take?
Well, it depends on your approach. Sure, you can track everything from spreadsheets, but you will need to build the reports yourself or rely on templates according to your software, and sometimes they bring out information that is not relevant to you. In this case, it would take some effort to start but once you have every source dialed up it is just a matter of keeping the data flowing.
On the other hand, if you use the Software approach, the effort would be placed in learning the tool, having your team on board, and having every team member accountable for its management, this is another of the advantages of this approach, kind of like bringing Agile to the forest. And then, you are ready to go, just click on the desired report, and analyze away.
So there you have it, what do you think? Is Business Intelligence something new to you? Or have you been digging into data for a while now?
Let us know in the comments and please take a look at our software by booking a demo here.
