What Are Business Insights?

Businesses are always on the lookout for new ways to improve their bottom line. Success is all about making the right decisions, and one of those is basing your business model on proven data and advanced analytics.

Recently, there’s been a shift in using technology and tools to gauge business intelligence. However, there is a potential downfall to this approach. Relying too much on platforms and dashboards can skew your outlook. 

That’s why it’s so important to consider business insights with business intelligence. Business insights provide a sophisticated view of what could be, rather than what’s been. Business owners who base their actions on past performances are bound to miss key prospects.

By implementing business insights into your approach, you can make better use of your tools. Let’s dig a little deeper to see exactly how you can benefit from business insights.

Here’s What We’ll Cover:

Deeper Insights

How to Build a High Level of Business Insights

Key Takeaways

Deeper Insights

The business intelligence tools you use are certainly important. But you also need to work towards collecting valuable data about your entity. Back in the day, business insights were mainly used for sales forecasting and reviewing knowledge. 

These often centered on areas such as the supply chain or product and increasing profit. This could refer to either product profitability or customer profitability. Production line operators need this key data to make strategic decisions. 

This is an industry vertical application that focuses on departmental functions. An extended method of this is to employ a horizontal approach.

That means using cross-organizational data that serves to connect all relevant parts together. In doing so, you’ll have a common outlook to help you predict future trends in various parts of your brand.

What’s more, it will help you determine what outcomes result from your actions. This kind of actionable insight is invaluable to successful businesses. Essentially, this level of business insight makes it possible to see how one action affects other areas. These areas can include staffing, liquidity or cash flow, among others.

In the end, will it make you profitable? How will it affect your customers? Thanks to business insights, you’ll have the inside track to make the best decisions for your company.

How to Build a High Level of Business Insights

There are a few things you need to consider when building an effective business intelligence solution. Let’s explore.

Powerful Data Structure: This comes from your business’s applications. These include things like financial accounting, logistics, customer files and supply chain. Basically, any areas that give you a vertical perspective of your business. 

Combined, you’re able to see the bigger picture, so to speak. Not only that, but you can effectively determine your company’s function at nearly any point in time. It’s then that you can put this data together to build horizontal data elements. 

Once you’re armed with this knowledge, you can equip your leaders with the information they need. It will allow them to make the appropriate changes within your company. This is where the use of data extraction tools comes in handy.

Look Ahead: As you look at business insights activity, you need to look ahead rather than behind. When you focus on what you’ve done instead of what you could do, you likely miss things that could help improve your business. Advanced analytics like this are too beneficial to pass up.

Use the Right Tools: Lastly, you need to make sure that you use the proper reporting tools. FreshBooks lets you enter the data you’ve collected so that you can better manage your projects and teams. Want to keep closer track of your time and use it more efficiently? FreshBooks allows you to do all that and more. 

Using the right tools is an essential component of being successful. Once you know what data to plug into FreshBooks, you can start making adjustments to various areas of your business. The primary goal is to make key changes that better your organization.

And with each change you make, business insights let you see how they affect your business in various areas.

Key Takeaways

How will your company benefit from business insights? This approach to business intelligence affords you visibility that would otherwise not be there. Since you’ll have the data and tools you need to see a true overview of your business, you’re sure to make better decisions moving forward.

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