Make better business decisions with Business Intelligence
By Cameron Andrich and Frida Andersson
You have probably heard of artificial intelligence – computers that analyse every google search we do and every YouTube clip we watch to learn about our behaviours and desires so that adverts and newsfeeds individually catered for us pop up whenever we use the internet. But have you heard of Business Intelligence?
In short, BI (Business Intelligence) is the use of technology to gather and sort data to prepare data visualisation reports to business owners, managers or workers to assist with business decisions and strategic planning.
Does that sound like a foreign language to you…? Let’s break this high-tech trend down and see if this can be relevant to your business.
How does BI work?
The days when most business information was stored in a ledger cashbook and notebooks are now gone. These days, most businesses use various platforms such as email, social media, accounting software and internal computer networks on a daily basis. BI software can get the data from all those platforms into one location and sort it to spot various trends. The sorted data will then be fed into BI visualisation software that can show these trends in easy-to-read graphs and visualisations.
What can BI solutions do for Businesses?
Know what’s working and what’s not
Knowledge is power. BI solutions can provide instant access on information such as key performance indicators, projections, tracking how well a department is performing compared to a budget or benchmark. At the click of a button, you can find out what products are selling best, and at what margins. Custom alerts can even be set up when targets are missed or achieved.
Cashflow
If you have more than one business (or, actually, if you have one business) it can be really hard to track your cashflow. With BI tools it becomes easy because you can merge all your businesses and accounts into a single data set so that you can view your cashflow at the click of a button.
Elimination of “gut feel”
Most business owners use their intuition and gut feel to make business decisions. BI tools eliminate this guesswork and make its insights readily available to other people within your business to make better informed decisions.
Looking into the future
No one can look into the future but, by utilising BI tools, you may start to feel you have a crystal ball. BI tools identify patterns, trends, and behaviours which businesses can use to better position themselves to cater for the future demands of their customers. BI predictive tools help businesses forecast changes in market demands, develop customer-centric marketing strategies, and keep pricing structures competitive.
Employee motivator
Reports can be set up for employees to view and track their performance such as productive hours, sales made, leads followed up and many more. This empowers employees to be more accountable for their work, so they don’t have to be micro-managed.
Getting started with BI
A lot of the scenarios above can still be achieved in a manual way but it’s time consuming and the results can be several months old. BI software is designed to give real time information so that decisions can be made based on what is happening now.
BI can’t do everything by itself. Without the human element BI doesn’t have much use. It also requires substantial set up time and technical know-how to get it going. To learn what your business can get out of BI we recommend you contact your accountant who can help with identifying how BI tools can help your business.
At Lincolns, we have begun to venture into the land of BI. If you think your business can leverage BI, please contact us to set up a free consultation meeting and demonstration.
The night of all nights
Last Friday night we had the night of all nights. It was an amazing tribute to Gary Philpott on his retirement from the Lincolns partnership after 33 years of wreaking havoc over the Lincolns team. He’s brought an energy and vitality to the team that is irreplaceable.
Gary’s retirement party was a stunning evening at Riverdale Farm on the banks of the Kalgan River. Farm boots, mud, family, chats around camp fires, espresso martinis and lots of laughs and reminiscing created a totally memorable night for us all. It was a perfect send off for a legend of Lincolns.
To add to the frivolity of the evening, Gary endured a courtroom ordeal presided over by the Honourable Justice Anderson where he faced charges of 33 years of disorderly conduct at work.
Unfortunately his defence lawyer was unable to come to his rescue as many of the key witnesses had sufficient evidence to prove Gary guilty of all charges.
His sentence … 30 hours a week of community service at Lincolns.
Big thanks to Riverdale Farm, Kookas Catering and Mr Sippy for making the night a huge success and to Krysta for the beautiful photographs.
Gary, you will be so deeply missed. Thank you for everything you have done for the Lincolns team. Enjoy your well deserved retirement with Robin and your family.
A coffee with …
When Brendan Taylor first invited Lincoln Hands to join him for a Coffee With chat, Lincoln chuckled saying, “mine is not an interesting story to tell”. Brendan disagreed.
Lincoln was a sheep farmer, owned two pubs, did a large property development, built a vineyard, managed a station, married twice, has four children aged 12 to 34, had swine flu, a double lung transplant and now, at the age of 68, has embarked on a new business venture with his younger kids.
Not interesting? You be the judge….
