Leveraging Agile Technology for Faster Business Insights
Every decision made today affects the growth of a business in the long run. Whether it’s as small as internal business discussion or at the international level, industry leaders are in a constant process of making decisions to ensure continued growth and achievement of goals.
The good news is managers no longer have to depend on their organizational experience, knowledge, and instinct but can leverage artificial intelligence, data, and analytics. Technology helps extract information and convert data into insights that improve decision-making quality and speed. Businesses are leveraging these technological advances to collaborate better, compete more aggressively in the market, and boost profits.
Recently, iLink Digital helped an American chain of fast-casual dining in migrating from Tablaue to Power BI and improve their decision-making process. Read more about the transformation here.
Role of Technology in Business Decision Processes
- Information Collection
Information is generally stored in varying databases within an organization such as customer history, financial records, market trends, or other corporate profiles. These data need to be fetched from its databases and help managers get a complete picture. A networked data management system enables organizations to collect the latest and updated information rapidly and more efficiently, helping leaders to access the information through a secure network.
- Data Management
To access such a large amount of data collected, an enterprise needs a robust data management system that can store information in a central location and keep it secure. This data management system provides business leaders a direct link between a central database and other outlets, making information available the moment they need it. They can also share these data within the organization and make appropriate joint decisions.
- Data Processing
Before managers can leverage data to conclude a decision, it has to undergo variant processing stages including preparation, structuring, and management. Just delivering raw data is unlikely to help in the decision-making process. Moreover, it creates a gap between IT and management affecting the flow of the business. Delivering strategically placed data insights helps managers to analyze and interpret possible outcomes for the company and then make a decision in the best interest of the business.
- Collaboration Tools
Today, decision-making is no longer an activity of just one or a few people. In the current economic context, most corporations involve the participation of a board of members or a group of stakeholders to make a collaborative decision. Thus to connect and discuss especially in times of remote working, organizations are leveraging collaboration tools. These tools not only connect the members seamlessly but also allow them to access all the essential data over a single network, speeding up the decision-making process.
Technologies behind Business Insights
Here is the list of technologies behind an organization’s intelligent reporting tools and dashboards.
- AI/ Machine Learning
AI/ML empowers businesses across various industries to harness the power of data by mapping the information and incorporating it into a unified database. With the help of ML algorithms, these data are transformed into predictions, eliminating errors like missing qualities or deceptions. Additionally, it can process data a lot faster, releasing managers from decision fatigue.
The world’s biggest and most innovative companies like Google, Amazon, and Facebook are already leveraging AI-powered algorithms as part of their decision-making process. Just last year AI-led hedge funds outperformed their human counterparts with annual returns of over 8.44%!
- Predictive Analytics
Powered by AI/ML, predictive analysis models offer incredible accuracy and reliability, especially for large corporate companies that deal with volumes of data. Employing predictive analytics helps data-driven organizations to make better strategic decisions, cuts costs, improve operational efficiency, enhance customer satisfaction while boosting sales and revenue. As per research, data-centered organizations are twenty-three times more likely to acquire customers, six times as likely to retain those customers, and as a result, nineteen times as likely to be profitable.
- Cloud Computing
Cloud BI solutions are capable of connecting multiple data sources, analyze the chunks of data and make them readily available to use. Managers can remotely access and extract these intelligent insights through any device at any time, without depending on the IT team. With the agility it offers, companies can efficiently manage their process, make proactive decisions, and improve bottom-line revenue.
Benefits of using technology in business decision making
94% of business and enterprise analytics professionals say data and analytics are critical to their organization’s digital transformation programs. In an era where data has become the new oil, it’s paramount to have the right tools and processes in place to leverage the competitive advantage data offers. Let’s dive deeper to understand how technology advantages impact the decision-making process.
- Employee Monitoring
The success of an organization is directly proportional to the productivity of its workspace. As businesses scrambled to work remotely in the pandemic, employee monitoring became a key concept. Having one central system for tracking employees is helping companies to analyze their employee performance and identify the areas where they can help a particular employee improve.
Employee insights help companies to organize targeted training sessions and professional development programs. Organizations can better track employees’ behavior and habits, improve their approach to work, and assign projects based on their capabilities. This not only increases productivity at a workspace but also creates engaged, loyal and satisfied employees.
With the right insights available at the fingertips, businesses can easily streamline the administrative process and automate the manual, recurring task that does not require human talent.
- Project Tracking
Accurately predicting how much time and money a project will require is a challenge that trips up many companies, sometimes with costly results, according to a study by McKinsey & Co. Most firms’ projects “massively blow their budgets,” said McKinsey.
Analysis of project tracking allows firms to gain insights into which client or project offers the highest level of potential profitability. This helps to allocate the available resources efficiently based on the project needs. Even when the project plan changes, data insights equip you with the right information and tools for seamless project operations. It also helps you predict project outcomes and make strategic decisions, reducing project complexity and lowering project costs.
- Asset Management
Asset managers are investing in analytics to better manage equipment and monitor the resources available. Especially with remote working, companies have allocated a lot of their digital assets to the employees that need constant updates and maintenance to protect their intellectual property from malware attacks.
Knowing which device affects productivity, needs maintenance or replacement is a goldmine for companies. Having this information improves ROI, secures organizational devices, reduces unnecessary spending, and improves decision-making regarding purchasing and operations. It also helps organizations plan a more accurate timeline for project completion and delivery.
- Product Development
Data analytics enables businesses to understand the current market state and provide a solid foundation for the product development process. It helps them to understand what matches best with customer needs and then plan design, and develop the product. It also helps to identify potential problems, take actions on them and streamline the process to avoid the same issue in the future.
Managers can keep an eye on the operations that yield better results under various conditions and analyze them for market response. This not only improves the quality of the product but also helps companies perform better than their competition.
The Road to Recovery is Paved with Data!
After the economic depression that the pandemic has created, companies are realizing the true potential of business intelligence tools that are helping them convert information into meaningful reports. As per statistics by MicroStrategy 2020, 52% of companies worldwide leverage advanced predictive analytics, and 59% of organizations around the world use big data analytics.
And why not? Data is the new fuel powering better and faster decisions. High-performing organizations are three times more likely than others to say their data and analytics initiatives have contributed at least 20 percent to EBIT (from 2016–19). All you need is a partnership with a technology solution provider that helps you to harness the power of analytics as per your business needs and goals.
Why iLink Digital?
iLink has been delivering business intelligence solutions across industries. Our recent acquisition of a data analytics firm, Derevo, empowers us to help our clients unleash the power of data, incorporate growth in their business and transform the way they work.
