Business Intelligence: finding the right solution for your business

One of the biggest challenges faced by any business is making sure the right people have access to the information they need. Without this basic function in place, it can quickly become difficult for your team to effectively perform their roles, and take a proactive approach in their job which so often leads to business development opportunities.

Business Intelligence (BI) is a technology-driven process for analysing your business data and presenting information, with the goal of helping staff at all levels of your organisation to make more informed and timely business decisions.

Using software tools and applications, it enables organisations to collect internal and external data, prepare it for analysis and create accurate, up-to-date reports – essentially streamlining your entire business management and reporting process.

 

The right BI software solution will allow people to do their jobs more effectively, and give management the assurance that everybody is working from the same information source; ensuring all-important continuity throughout the business.

It’s therefore essential that your BI solution meets a certain set of important criteria in order to provide the best possible benefits for your business.

In Datel’s experience, the following are the key features to look out for in any BI solution:

• Easy to implement

Requires minimal training to save on set-up costs and allow a quick return on investment.

• Real-time features

It should show real-time information and send automated alerts to allow issues to be addressed as they arise.

• Report generation

Users must be able to design and build new reports to keep abreast of constantly changing information requirements.

• Access security

Restricted access options should be available through specific user permission to restrict access to sensitive data.

• Flexible reporting

Ability to report over any data source - so information from different applications can be viewed in one place.

• Accessible

It should be accessible from anywhere at any time on any type of device – allowing for instant 24/7 access.

At Datel we specialise in understanding your business requirements and recommending the right solution for you.  Our team asses the solutions on the market and select the best available to work with your Sage solution.

One solution currently helping many of our Sage 200 customers is Panintelligence, a flexible BI reporting dashboard specifically designed for Sage.

Winner of the Sage Innovation Award at Sage’s Partner of the Year Awards in 2014, this Business Intelligence solution allows you to report on all your Sage data in one place.

As a web browser-based solution, Panintelligence can be accessed remotely and has the ability to directly connect to any database, so your external data and servers won’t need to be moved.

The Panintelligence dashboard comes with prebuilt Sage 200 and Sage CRM data connections and a set of interactive charts, all of which offer a top-down, customisable view of data in real-time. The software is extremely intuitive and it allows users to create additional charts with only a few mouse clicks.

The availability of different access privileges built into the dashboard ensures that sensitive data is only visible to authorised users, allowing KPIs and SLAs to be monitored at individual, departmental or company levels.

If you’d like more information about Panintelligence or the other business intelligence solution we offer and how they can help your business, get in touch with the team at Datel.