Why You Need Enterprise Analytics

Today’s companies are suffering from severe information overload. Increasingly complex business transactions are generating massive volumes of data, and further compounding the problem is the fact that this information is often scattered across multiple departments and business units. However, enterprise analytics solutions are helping organizations to harness and leverage their most valuable asset – their enterprise information.

Enterprise Analytics: A Solution for Information Chaos

In virtually every business, countless databases, systems, and business applications exist in disparate, fragmented, un-integrated silos. This makes it extremely difficult for employees to find, access, collect, and analyze the information they need. So, their decisions – which must often be made “on the fly” – are either delayed, or made with little or no insight or knowledge. In many cases, workers will rely on IT staff to collect and aggregate the needed information into printed reports – a process that distracts from mission-critical corporate technology initiatives.

The result of all this information chaos? Individual productivity, as well as the performance of the entire organization, is seriously hindered.

But with an enterprise analytics solution in place, organizations are empowered to rapidly and easily retrieve, consolidate, format, analyze, and interpret any information from virtually any source throughout the company. This insight enables them to:

• Monitor the status of mission-critical activities, and assess how well day-to-day tasks are executed
• Identify the patterns and trends that have the greatest impact (negative or positive) on operational efficiency
• Understand and anticipate marketplace trends
• Ensure full compliance with all reporting standards and guidelines, such as Sarbanes-Oxley or HIPAA

Armed with the information that an enterprise analytics software system can provide, companies can become more agile and more dynamic. This in turn allows them to take swift action to correct problems, address areas in need of improvement, react to changing business conditions, and leverage opportunities as soon as they arise.

Other significant benefits that can be achieved through the purchase and implementation of an enterprise analytics software package include:

• Improved access to and integration of business data from multiple disparate sources.
• Complete visibility into day-to-day activities, as well as progress towards the achievement of plans and goals, and the overall state of the business.
• Enhanced collaboration and information-sharing across all areas of the enterprise.
• More rapid detection of problems and issues, before they negatively affect performance.
• The ability to forecast important business events, based on trends in historical data.

Additionally, enterprise analytics systems enable the development and implementation of more informed and successful corporate plans. The entire strategic planning process is enhanced with the use of an enterprise analytics application. Objectives can be clearly defined and transformed into measurable goals. These can then be communicated throughout all levels of the organization. Additionally, enterprise analytics enables real-time tracking of the key performance indicators and critical metrics that relate directly to those plans.

Enterprise analytics can also enhance relationships with customers, suppliers, vendors, and other business partners by facilitating fast communication, collaboration, and information flow among all key stakeholders.