Business intelligence: the secret weapon for cost savings?
- 31/01/2024
You want to cut costs, but preferably not based on gut feeling? With a reporting tool, you get quick insights into bottlenecks and opportunities throughout your business, and can decide where savings are most useful.
At a time of economic turmoil caused by the situation in Ukraine/Russia, companies' margins are being squeezed by new record prices for energy and raw materials. It is therefore logical that many companies are concerned and looking for cost savings. Only, that's not easy. After all, how do you decide what to save on?
One way not to do it is based on gut feeling. Instinct or gut feeling are by no means a reliable basis for decisions. A better way is to rely on the data and insights present in your business systems. And let's face it: there is more than enough data today.
So the problem is no longer a lack of data, but rather a lack of overview and insight into that data. Visualizing or making sense of data is often a technical, time-consuming task that is deferred for day-to-day operational tasks. Data is also often very fragmented in different systems, - ERP, Excel files, planning tools, etc. - which further complicates the overview.
Data-based insights
The solution? With 9A Smart Insights, you can connect to data from different systems and easily visualize it, quickly reaching deeper insights. So it's an ideal platform for employees and managers to make better and faster data-driven decisions.
9A Smart Insights uses Power BI, but delivers data coming from Dynamics in a more structured and therefore easier way. It is a cloud platform, meaning you can access data visualizations and interactive reports anytime, anywhere. Data is no longer fragmented in your organization, but is always available online in one central location via a web browser. The strength of Power BI is that it brings different departments and systems together on one platform: finance, purchasing, production, inventory management and much more.
In times of exploding energy prices, closely tracking consumption is a must. Dashboards can help you closely monitor electricity, gas and water consumption in different locations. You may discover opportunities for cost savings. But it is also possible, for example, to compare your energy reports with your production dashboards, and see where you can make your production more energy efficient.
An obvious way to save money is to limit large inventories. Both space costs, interest costs and risk costs can be high with (too) large inventories. In the inventory dashboard, for example, you can see where you can change inventory volume to get better results, even if you work with different inventory locations. This is not just about managing inventory per se, but also how it is related to other areas, such as sales. This way you can make your inventory responsive to sales trends and make sure you have the right inventory at the right time.
Of course, a reporting tool is not just about saving money, but also about growth. Sales reports can already give you good insight into which products are selling well and which are not. Perhaps a poor selling product has a poorer customer experience? Or maybe there is a problem with delivery time? In any case, sales reports can show you where the bottlenecks are, so that you can timely remove the poorly selling - and thus cost-consuming - products from your portfolio.
Shorten the learning curve, reduce startup cost
Are you convinced of the power of reporting? But don't fancy the long road to it? Well there is a way to shorten that start-up phase and learning curve and thus significantly reduce your start-up costs. 9A Smart Insights is an intelligent data platform based on Power BI that enables companies to quickly extract data sources and seamlessly turn them into real insights. 9A Smart Insights is a quick-start package with pre-filled content packages that enable your team to set up dashboards faster.
Want to get started quickly with reporting and save costs based on data-driven insights? Then 9A Smart Insights may be the ideal solution for your business.
