Does your company need business intelligence?
Our honest answer: no, it doesn’t. You can grow your business without it. (Bet you didn’t expect that answer 😀)
But could your company benefit from business intelligence?
Our honest answer: it depends.
“Depends on what?” you may ask.
That’s exactly what we are going to discuss in this article.
Here’s a checklist with five questions that will help you decide whether or not you should invest in business intelligence.
Five Questions To Decide If Your Company Needs a Business Intelligence Tool
#1 Do You Have Enough Data?
Business intelligence is about collecting data, analyzing it, and drawing actionable business insights.
If you don’t have enough relevant data, even the most sophisticated BI solution will not be of much help.
This means that if you have just launched your business, then investing in business intelligence doesn’t make sense since you won’t benefit from it.
It’s better to put that idea aside until you have more data available to you and keeping track of things in a spreadsheet like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets may be the best fit at the moment.
#2 Are There People Who Need Access To Data for Your Business Intelligence Tool?
When you are a solopreneur, you have access to all the company data, so there’s not much need for a business intelligence solution.
Sure, maybe it would be nice to have everything in one place instead of having it scattered over different apps, but pulling it together manually is easy at this stage.
However, once you start hiring employees, you need to figure out who should have access to what, since you can’t just give everyone logins to the company accounts.
That’s where business intelligence comes in. You can use BI software to pull data from the apps your company is using, then give access to it to your employees without giving them access to the accounts themselves.
#3 Do You Have Specific Questions That Someone Can Answer With the Data At Your Disposal?
Everyone aims to be “data-driven” nowadays. And there’s nothing wrong with that. As a BI company, we love data.
However, “data” has become a marketing buzzword, to the point where people expect the data alone to somehow add to their bottom line.
But that’s not how it works.
To derive value from data, you need to know:
- Business problems that you want to solve
- Questions that you need to ask to solve them
- Data can be used to answer those questions
Data is just a collection of information. It can’t do anything in and of itself. It’s what you do with it that matters.
#4 Have You Tried Answering Those Questions Manually?
Now, even if you know what questions you need to ask, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you should invest in BI and a business intelligence tool in particular.
The truth is that going through the data manually might be enough to provide you with the information that you need.
Yes, it’s much less glamorous, but also much less expensive.
#5 What Is the ROI of Investing in a Business Intelligence Tool?
You also need to ask yourself how much money you will make if you successfully solve those problems. Here is the ultimate decision tree on whether you need a BI tool:
- If you’ll make less money than the BI solution would cost, it makes no sense to invest in it because the ROI would be negative.
- If you make more money than the BI solution would cost, you should consider investing in it since the ROI would be positive.
This may seem obvious. That’s because it is.
However, you’d be surprised at how often companies make the mistake of buying expensive software only to realize that they are losing money because of it (or to simply ignore that fact completely).
So When Should You Invest In a Business Intelligence Tool?
The best time to invest in business intelligence is when you have an established process for:
- Collecting data.
- Manually consolidating data.
- Manually analyzing data.
In other words, you want first to see if all this makes sense business-wise, then invest in a business intelligence tool or solution that allows you to take it to the next level.
Plus, that way, business intelligence won’t be something completely new. It will be a much-welcome upgrade to the processes that are already in place.
Just be mindful that implementing a BI solution can be a resource-intensive endeavor since you need to integrate it, set everything up, train your team on how to use it, etc.
So before you purchase BI software, make sure that you can afford the solution itself and everything else that is needed for your team to make the most out of it.
How DashboardFox Can Help You as a Business Intelligence Tool
Now that you have reached the end of this article, one thing is for sure: you at some point will need a business intelligence tool for your business.
Having a business intelligence tool can make your life much easier, and it also gives you more time to focus more on things where you have to focus on providing the best quality of service to your customers.
That’s where DashboardFox enters the picture.
What DashboardFox Can Offer
DashboardFox is designed for business users, priced for small to medium-sized businesses, and packed with enterprise-sized features. It ticks the majority of the boxes in every checklist for a great business intelligence tool, and not only that. It has three things to offer than most of its competitors do not.
Concierge Level Support
All our customers (whether you buy 1 license or an unlimited package) get 1 year of priority support included. What is priority support? It’s like having a dedicated team of experts ready to respond at your every beck and call.
In addition to helping you resolve product issues like any vendor tries to do (we emphasize tries). With DashboardFox, our support team aims to help you achieve the goal you have with your data. We can assist you with building reports and dashboards. Make recommendations on the best way to display data or how data may need to be modified to properly get to the answers you’re seeking.
Plus, if you don’t have any resources on staff to dedicate, we do offer professional services for an additional cost, so that we take on the responsibility for your deliverable. Many of our customers turn to us for a turnkey solution, we deploy, build the reports, and more to give them the dashboards and results they need.
Affordable Pricing Points
Speaking of budget, DashboardFox sets itself apart from the competition by not having any subscriptions at all. No monthly, quarterly, or annual subscriptions to maintain -- at all.
A one-time payment is all needed to get everything you need in a business intelligence tool.
Now for full disclosure, you pay once, and you can use the software forever. But after the first year, we do offer optional maintenance, so you can continue to access our priority support team, and you can continue to upgrade DashboardFox to the latest version.
It’s optional, but we highly recommended it. The best part of the model is the burden is on us to perform and continue to enhance the product so that you want to renew support and/or updates. If you don’t, you can still always use the version you have for life, with no extra fees or subscriptions.
Safety and Protection for Your Data
Lastly, DashboardFox is self-hosted, on-premise deployed software, meaning you don’t have to expose your data to an external vendor’s cloud. Your data stays protected behind your firewalls and your security network.
But if you do want to share dashboards and reports externally, DashboardFox has the enterprise security features that allow you to set who can see which data and even limit access to certain data. This keeps your data secure and protected without any worries of leakages.
Of course, DashboardFox can offer more, but this article is not enough for that. We’re waiting! Give us a call, or better yet, book a live demo for free to see what you can experience for your business with us.