Phocas: 5 Questions To Ask About Business Intelligence Software

Are you feeling as if your business is operating half blind, without free and easy access to the sort of business-critical data that employees need – not just at the very top, but across all of the different levels and departments? Once you’ve decided to investigate implementing a business intelligence (BI) tool, consider these hints and tips:

Q: Where to start looking?
A: Start with one of the authoritative surveys of Business Intelligence (BI) solutions. There are two main ones to consider: BARC Research and Gartner. These highly respected research organizations publish annual comprehensive surveys of the world’s main providers of business analytical tools.

Q: What outside sources should I review?
A: There are numerous places to go looking for that advice - both through professional contacts and online. These might include your company’s suppliers or customers. The same applies to sister/group companies. These contacts probably have a good idea about your company’s character and so will be well placed to give advice about their experiences with BI.

Q: What about my ERP provider?
A: If you're worried about issues of BI compatibility with your ERP/accounting software, be sure to involve your technical team in the discussion. The best BI programs will need to be fully compatible with your ERP in order to be effective.

Q: Which employees should I involve?
A: BI lives or dies by who uses it and how widely. Early version of BI were often skewed towards Sales use but nowadays other departments such as Marketing, HR, Commercial, Accounts and Inventory realize benefits from using BI. Be sure all departments are considered and/or consulted on the issue.

Q: What other issues might come up?
A: One of the most frequent issues that can arise is internal resistance to the idea of BI. Access to company data has, in many companies historically been tightly controlled by a very privileged group. The most common answer to this issue is to make BI Champions key drivers of your project: staff who have successfully shown that freeing up data delivers tangible benefits.

To learn more about BI preparations, and how Phocas Software can help meet you company's business intelligence needs, visit the Phocas News Blog.

The Brown Smith Wallace 2014-15 Distribution and Manufacturing Software Guides are currently available for download. Please contact snelson@bswllc.com for more information about these latest editions.

2014 Distribution Software Guide: 

http://track.websiteceo.com/r/160948/www.software4distributors.com/downloads/2014_Distribution_Software_Guide_From_Blog.pdf

 

2014 Manufacturing Software Guide: 

http://track.websiteceo.com/r/160948/www.software4distributors.com/downloads/2014_Manufacturing_Software_Guide_From_Blog.pdf

 

Additional materials: 

http://www.software4distributors.com/vendor/resources_index.aspx