What can cause business failures?
In a recent Sage survey of business leaders, 86% of respondents blamed poor communication and a lack of collaboration for business failures. They also cited poor data flow as a real issue, with many stating that they had to speak to at least 5 people to get a picture of an issue occurring in their business. Here lies a common problem that we see in many organisations; valuable data is locked away in people’s heads and in siloed systems.
Fundamental to the problem is that information ages
As soon as you’ve produced a report it is immediately out of date. Overlay the time taken to add insight to a report or to present it in a dashboard and you leave people questioning the veracity of data and second-guessing what is really happening. Old reports force business decision-makers to become reactive, always looking backwards to make sense of the future.
Many organisations have already modernised their reporting.
Are you measuring and monitoring the right thing?
Real-time reporting and dashboards present far more accurate information. However, solving the problem with ageing data is one thing, but are you looking to analyse the right thing?
Many companies don’t have the data agility to transform their KPIs. Metrics straight out of business school might be the norm and might still hold value, but should they hold the elevated status that they do. What about alternative views on data, perhaps arising from a different department, as an alternative KPI to monitor success?
What if you could have clear, accurate financial reporting overlaid with more proactive KPIs to give a multi-dimensional view of your business in real-time?
Sage whitepaper ‘You are what you measure’
In the Sage whitepaper, You Are What You Measure, we explore the reality of moving from the reactive to the proactive use of data to improve the visibility of financial performance, eliminate operational silos and help to reduce the uncertainty of cash flow.
Understand what better analytics in action really looks like.
