A frequent mistake made by business people: avoid it to reduce costs and increase profits

2020 07 08 · 4 min read

Whether you are looking for ideas to apply in your business, or are already trying to apply them in an existing organisational structure while developing your product, analysing the market and assessing the quality of your customer service, you cannot work without business analytics. While most businesses understand the usefulness of this tool, they typically do not utilise all of its capabilities – this is a very common mistake.

Irmantas Bankauskas, Chief Sales Officer at Baltic Amadeus, a company that develops unique IT solutions and offers advice on digitisation, explained that business analytics are a powerful tool that can enable you to make data-based decisions and acquire a competitive edge.

“Business analytics allow you to understand the nature of your business. Information provided in a convenient visual form is easier to understand and remember, so it contributes to productivity and enables successful growth. Analytics are important in every stage of business development, and the skills acquired by using this tool make it possible to effectively organise your operations, plan your outcomes, reduce expenses and increase your profit,” said Bankauskas.

In general, business analytics are the technologies, systems and related processes that are designed to analyse a business and the objects within its environment. The main goal of business analytics is to improve and accelerate business decisions. Nevertheless, there are more advantages to using this tool.

1. No need for guesswork

When managing a business, important decisions should never be based only on intuition. The decisions made on the basis of business analytics are usually more reliable. In addition, they can be made at the most favourable time, due to almost real-time analyses.

2. Valuable business insights

By using business analytics tools, companies can assess their productivity, revenue, success and specific performance indicators. Senior executives can save a lot of time by viewing the key performance indicators at a glance, and quickly understand the strengths and weaknesses, as well as which innovations are useful and which are not.

3. Better quality of information

The data that a company collects is rarely flawless. However, as a company’s business analytics mature, the quality of this data and information becomes an important priority. Businesses that take care of their data and data quality are typically more successful than their competitors, because high-quality data allows them to better understand their entire operations.

4. Quicker and more accurate solutions

Today, everything is changing and improving rapidly. In order to keep pace with one’s competitors, not only does a company have to make good decisions, but it has to make them quickly. Business analytics systems allow you to quickly and conveniently access key information, thereby reducing the amount of time required to make the right decision.

5. Stored history

One of the biggest advantages of a business analytics system is the saving and storage of your history, because this helps you to avoid repeating past mistakes. Furthermore, by using historical data you can forecast future indicators, as well as finding out what factors caused past successes or failures.

6. Possibility of converting goals into reality

With accurate information, not only can a company set ambitious goals – it can achieve them. Over time, the company begins to understand which goals are realistic and what are the obstacles to achieving those goals.

Real examples: from accounting to future forecasts

According to Bankauskas, the experience of Baltic Amadeus has shown that business analytics are a universal and widely-used tool which can examine data in various ways, allowing companies to make future forecasts and plan appropriate business actions.

“For example, business analytics make it possible to combine the results of the accounting system with those from the internal system that collects data. All of this enables a company to forecast its customer flows and potential load, and this helps to avoid crisis situations, allocate costs and appropriately adjust fees,” the interviewee told us.

The specialist revealed that some clients use this service to monitor and summarise not only their system data but the entire business process – from warehouse management to the effectiveness of their item transportation and order completion status.

Business analytics also allow you to monitor your business marketing and staff indicators, as well as the business of your employees, the quality of their work and their sales. Data from other business-management systems can be used and analysed within a general context. Furthermore, the data can be pre-processed taking into account the company’s business logic. This automated process requires far less human involvement.

A quickly-growing tool that helps grow business operations

“When advising companies, the first thing we find out is what information systems the client has, where and what format it uses to store important information, the main questions the client wants to answer, and what business processes are typical of that organisation. We then code, test, analyse, calculate and create an entire automated route from the systems to easy-to-use reports and data panels. We try to make all the required information and calculations easily accessible and visually presented in a simple, clear and understandable way,” said Bankauskas.

According to the expert, business analytics can be compared to a company’s doctor. Not only do they save people during a crisis, but they also constantly monitor the company’s condition and feel its pulse, therefore preventing potential risks.

“We can see that business analytics are one of the most quickly-growing tools available today, and we advise companies not to miss the opportunity to keep pace with the newest trends in order to: analyse their existing situation, forecast changes, look for new business opportunities and prepare for the potential risks. This is how they can successfully grow their business,” recommended the interviewee.