BI and BPA from ChristianSteven

4 Business Process Automation Success Stories

Christian Ofori-Boateng — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 23:17:06 +0000

If you're one of those people that think the time to buy a BI reporting software is when the number of reports becomes too time-consuming for staff to run themselves, you're missing out on some incredible BPA opportunities.

Here are 4 ideas from 3 companies that found creative ways to improve workflows and reduce costs with their BI reporting software.

The Secret to Getting Faster Payment from Customers

Christian Ofori-Boateng — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 23:16:02 +0000

Want to know how to get customers to pay faster, without resorting to painful changes like reduced net terms or customer credit?

Take a cue from EMPR®Australia, the number one replacement parts reseller for HP, Toshiba, and ASUS across Australia and New Zealand.

Follow this link to learn how they improved their cash flow an astounding 50% in under 5 months.

If you want to know why, you’ve got to capture what

Christian Ofori-Boateng — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 16:27:24 +0000

What would you say if I told you that you already have the information you need to double, triple, even quadruple your business? It's there just waiting for you to tap into it.

Last month, I gave you 5 tips to help you maintain the integrity of the data in your databases.

This month's lesson is designed to help you understand what business intelligence data you need to capture as it happens, and I'm going to use Dan, a moderately successful small business owner, to illustrate my point.

Read this month's article: "With Business Intelligence, It's What You Don't Know that Hurts" and learn how to turn everyday data into useful business intelligence information.

You’re only as smart as your data

Christian Ofori-Boateng — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 19:05:56 +0000

Good data is the cornerstone of any business intelligence project, and good data requires forethought.

Let's say, for example, that you want a BI report that breaks down sales by state. Obviously, you'll need a field in your database that identifies the state in order to sort. If you don't do anything to police the sales data as it's captured, your database will probably contain sales transactions for CA, Calif, and Cal.

Tp get an accurate picture of all the sales that occurred in California, your search query would need to account for these well-known abbreviations, plus any nonstandard abbreviations (and typos!) that people may input.

This month's article contains 5 tips that will help you ensure the integrity of the data in your database. Next month, I'll talk in detail about the fields you'll need in order to have the reports you want.

Business intelligence for small businesses

Christian Ofori-Boateng — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 23:08:12 +0000

Many small business owners think business intelligence is unattainable or unnecessary until they grow to a certain size. Even the industry term itself -- "business intelligence" -- sounds complicated and expensive.

But once you get past the technical jargon, you'll realize that BI is just common sense applied to business. Let me explain...

The hidden costs of bargain BI automation software

Christian Ofori-Boateng — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 13:00:59 +0000

Purchase price and ongoing software maintenance are just two things you need to consider when calculating the TCO for a BI report generation and scheduling software.

Things like:

How long will it take to implement and deploy the software?
How many workarounds will be needed to get the software to do what you want it to do?
What other licenses (e.g. Crystal Reports) will be required to use the BI report scheduling software? and
How much time will your staff spend monitoring the software and handling support calls?

Can quickly eat up any savings gained by going with a cheaper BI software.

More...

Automate more than reports with these 3 BI scheduling software features

Christian Ofori-Boateng — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 13:00:14 +0000

Think you need to buy a special business process automation software to automate accounting, inventory, compliance, or other activities?

You already have everything you need if your BI report generation and scheduling software does these 3 things.

3 questions that will eliminate BI buyer’s remorse

Christian Ofori-Boateng — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 15:25:00 +0000

The devil's in the details....

While many BI report generation and scheduling softwares will (on the surface) appear to meet your criteria, there are subtle differences that make some products rigid, more costly to maintain, and less likely to scale.

Keep reading to discover 3 questions that will help you reap the most value from your BI automation plans.

Business Intelligence: A Double-Edged Sword?

Christian Ofori-Boateng — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 14:37:20 +0000

Why is it that something that can make a company loads more profitable can also significantly hurt productivity? Case in point: business intelligence. Internal users get a taste of business intelligence… their appetite for information becomes insatiable… and IT productivity tanks.

Usually I meet the IT person when they’ve reached their limit and can no longer afford to manually build reports for the entire company. They download our free 30-day trial of CRD, MARS, or SQL-RD because they want to get out of the drudgery of report generation, but they don’t always think about how the demand for BI reports also hurts their users’ productivity.

If you want to get ahead of the BI curve, here are 4 business process management features that will make your business users say “I love you, man.”