The benefits of insights-as-a-service help companies use business intelligence to compete in an increasingly data-driven economy.
A McKinsey Global Survey highlights the challenges businesses face when trying to use data analytics to make business decisions. The expertise and resources required to launch a business intelligence strategy that leads to actionable insights are simply out of reach for many companies. As a result, about 40% of the respondents in the survey say their data analytics efforts have been “ad hoc.”
Yet, top-performing companies credit business intelligence and data analytics for helping them grow by at least 20%.
Clearly, companies that don’t use business intelligence are at a disadvantage. But how can they overcome the prohibitive costs of hiring the data scientists and installing the infrastructure needed for a successful business intelligence strategy?
That’s how insights-as-a-service benefits companies looking for an affordable way to leverage an analytics platform for better business decisions. But insight-as-a-service isn’t a second-rate BI solution. Insights-as-a-service companies deliver the same powerful business intelligence tools that mammoth corporations enjoy but for a fraction of the price.
Improve Productivity with Insights-as-a-Service
Insights-as-a-service can almost instantly process large amounts of information to increase the efficiency of your operations.
Supply chain logistics is a great example of how transforming data into insights can improve productivity and efficiency.
From the increase of online ordering to a shortage of drivers, companies face considerable challenges to meeting customer demands for timely, flexible deliveries. Data analytics can transform raw data, such as market trends and road construction reports, into faster, more efficient deliveries. Amazon is even working on predictive analytics that will ship an item to a customer’s area before the order is even placed.
The following are just a few of the productivity-boosting benefits you can realize when using insights-as-a-service.
Create more targeted marketing campaigns by analyzing customer behavior trends.
Uncover manufacturing issues by analyzing quality metrics.
Find out which job sites are attracting the best talent and reduce your time-to-hire ratio.
Use company data from across departments to uncover problematic customers that cost you more than the sales they generate.
Identify Patterns Using Insights-as-a-Service
Hidden in all your raw business data are patterns. The benefits of insights-as-a-service include the ability to spot these patterns.
American Express uses data analytics to identify customer behavior patterns. Using predictive analytics, American Express can predict which accounts will close within four months. American Express then uses enhanced marketing, made more effective though business analytics, to target and retain those customers.
Insights-as-a-service can benefit your company using predictive analytics to identify patterns, such as:
Analyze customer behavior to predict how close a customer is to making a purchase. Then, increase sales with targeted marketing.
Consolidate company data with external data sources to create market forecasts.
Analyze customer and product history to anticipate demand.
Automate Processes Using Insights-as-a-Service
Insights-as-a-service helps your company become “data-first.”
Whether you’re storing employee forms in a filing cabinet or manually inputting data into Excel, your company is wasting resources every time a task is done manually. Insights-as-a-service helps you identify manual tasks that can go digital. With all your data digitized, you’re ready to automate reports and other processes.
Some of the processes you can automate using insights-as-a-service include:
Automate email and social media marketing based on customer activity.
Automatically check data for accuracy, ensuring your insights are accurate.
Connect to vendor systems to automatically download accounts payable information.
Read all about the most important data management best practices.
Get Clarity with Insights-as-a-Service
Perhaps the biggest benefit of insights-as-a-service is access to experts that make the whole process seamless.
The McKinsey survey found that a comprehensive and long-term business intelligence strategy is the key to growing your company using data analytics. But developing that strategy is impossible without a dedicated data team.
Your insights-as-a-service partner can answer all your questions. Their data team can help you develop a business intelligence strategy and identify the raw data you require to meet your goals. And when your business intelligence strategy goes live, your insights-as-a-service partner will be available to offer support.
Here are other ways an insights-as-a-service company can bring clarity to your data:
Access data visualization tools that make business analytics easy-to-read. Check out these data visualization examples.
Easily create custom queries to answer questions as they come up.
Make data and actionable insights available across departments.
According to McKinsey & Company, “companies with the greatest overall growth in revenue and earnings receive a significant portion of that boost from data and analytics.” Data analytics and business intelligence tools that provide actionable insight are becoming so widespread that companies won’t be able to compete with a business intelligence strategy. Luckily, insights-as-a-service can provide all the benefits of big data analytics without the high price tag.
Are you ready to see what insights-as-a-service can do for you? Call Teamworks Group today.