No matter the size or the type, your organization uses some type and level of analytics. This could be as simple as Excel or Google sheets and pivot tables, or as complex as tabular and multidimensional tables.
Analytics come in three flavors: Descriptive, Predictive and Prescriptive.
Descriptive analytics is a summary of data points collected over different time periods. For instance, tallying requests for a specific product or grouping numbers of incidents by different categories are examples of descriptive analytics.
With the advent of machine learning and the ability to collect massive amounts of data, also known as big data, organizations can predict scenarios and behaviors.
Prescriptive analytics uses a combination of machine learning, business rules, artificial intelligence, and algorithms to recommend options for a given scenario.
Your organization may already have all the necessary tools to achieve business intelligence (BI). Even if it doesn’t, acquiring the right tools shouldn’t discourage you from reach the intended business goals. Various tools are available at either very little or no cost. It’s a matter of knowing what to look for and how to use those tools to accomplish the intended goals.
Simply put, making decisions without data these days is going to result in less than ideal decisions that could put your organization at a disadvantage.
Depending on the size and the level of maturity, your organization may need to take any one or some combination of the following actions:
- Build a data warehouse,
- Better use of Excel or Google Sheets,
- Use a visualization tool,
- Build a database to store transactional data,
- Or some combination.
Ask yourself. How has data benefited your organization’s mission, direction, and its competitive edge?
Call us if you’re uncertain about any of these and with a free consultation, you won’t lose a dime.