Insights-as-a-service (sometimes referred to as IaaS) give companies the data-driven, decision-making power of analytics – without the steep cost of infrastructure and IT personnel to support it.
All of today’s biggest corporations — including Amazon, Walmart, Netflix — achieved their business goals by turning volumes of data into actionable insights.
However, most companies don’t have the same resources as larger corporations. As a result, they aren’t able to build their own BI solution and end up missing out on actionable insights that drive growth. This is where Insights-as-a-Service comes into play.
Let’s break down what Insights-as-a-Service is, how it can benefit your business, and how you can get started.
What is Insight-as-a-Service?
Insights-as-a-Service is a cost-effective and customized platform that brings together all company data into one place. This platform translates data into actionable insights through business intelligence dashboards (or, data visualizations). The provider who delivers IaaS for your company takes on the responsibility of cleaning and organizing data, as well as optimizing and maintaining the platform it's presented on.
Since this service and platform is built, managed, and hosted by the provider, your company will not have to worry about utilizing in-house IT resources or hiring additional experts to analyze and organize data for you.
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What are the business benefits of Insights-as-a-Service?
There are a variety of ways your business can benefit from Insights-as-a-Service, but let’s discuss some of the most important benefits.
You can reduce costs: When you bring all your data into one place, it becomes much easier to get a clear picture of where money is going. Because of this, you can find new ways to reduce expenses, increase margins, and reach your business goals.
You can see the big picture: With a customized IaaS solution, all data sources go to one place. This means all departments speak to each other. When this happens, you’ll get a clean, holistic view of your business and its data.
You can automate processes: From processing to analyzing to reporting, a comprehensive Insights-as-a-Service platform does it all automatically. Forget about spending hours building and organizing one report, and don’t even worry about filtering through mountains of data. Your IaaS platform does it for you.
You can spot patterns: Insights-as-a-Service is all about INSIGHTS. This solution brings together all types of data and displays it in ways that showcases trends, anomalies, and more. At a glance, you can see what’s working, what’s not working, and what needs your attention.
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What should you look for in an Insights-as-a-Service platform?
Not all IaaS platforms are created equal. Some lack features; others lack customization, and even more lack support. Let’s take a look at some of the mission-critical IaaS features that should never be overlooked.
Customized: While there are plug-and-play IaaS software solutions out there, they are not customized. As a result, they can only go so far for your company. They might be able to bring together some of your sales data and the majority of your accounting data, but what about your HR and management data? If all of these data sources don’t talk to each other, it’ll only be a matter of time before you miss out on important insights.
Affordable: An IaaS solution should be affordable, and it should save you money over hiring internal resources to build, manage, organize, and house your data.
Supported: Insights-as-a-Service companies should wrap full support into their solutions. They should pride themselves on making sure that the service they deliver to you works as it should, when it should, how it should. In no situation should this be a leave-it-and-forget-it situation for the provider.
Automated: Even though support should be part of the deal, the platform itself should be seamless. There should not be any necessary action on your part or the part of the provider to make sure your IaaS platform completes its necessary functions. Everything you need out of your IaaS solution should be delivered automatically.
Real-Time: Data should be displayed in real-time, and you should never be working with out-of-date data. This is especially important since the goal is to make smarter, faster business decisions with the insights provided by your IaaS platform. If these insights are not accurate and not timely, you may end up making business decisions that don’t make sense and won’t provide the desired outcomes.
How to get started with Insights-as-a-Service
If you’re ready to get started with Insights-as-a-Service, we’d love to help.
At Teamworks, we provide companies of all shapes and sizes with custom IaaS solutions that deliver powerful, automated, and accurate insights. Our solution provides intuitive data visualizations, eliminates clunky reporting, and reduces the need for expensive 3rd party BI tools.
To get started with Insights-as-a-Service, reach out to us online.
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