Why Your Business Needs Enterprise Analytics

Before I was a penetration tester, I was an Android Developer, and before I was an Android developer, I was an Enterprise Analyst. The thing is, I never stopped doing enterprise analytics. I've been doing consulting work for various start-ups for the past 10 years. I have helped companies deliver data to customers, measure the performance of pilots, and raise additional rounds of funding by creating compelling stories from their data. If you're a company that produces any data and you aren't utilizing enterprise analytics, you're losing potential growth opportunities. Here are a few reasons to start analyzing your data.

It's not expensive

Anything with a label of "enterprise" sounds expensive, but business intelligence tools have become surprisingly affordable in recent years. BI tooling can be a relatively small expense for a wealth of information. If your company is in the cloud and using AWS, QuickSight is Amazon's business intelligence platform with author licenses running between $24 and $40 per user per month. For Microsoft-rooted companies, Power BI is a perfect solution with licenses costing between $14 and $30 per user. Other great options include BI tools like Tableau, with creator accounts that range around $75 per user per month. Your Power BI license could cost you just as much as a ChatGPT subscription.

The benefit of working with a small business consultant like myself is the competitive rates I can offer you. I only charge you for the hours you actually need—no minimums. We typically have discussions about the reports you want, I create them, and then perform regular maintenance.

Understanding your data

It doesn't matter if you're selling a web application, providing a service, or selling retail products, you produce lots of data. Business intelligence can pull that data together and tell a story. You know the number of page views, but do you know how long users stay on your web page? Do you know if there's a correlation between account creation and first purchases? That information is hiding in your database, but without business intelligence, you're not going to understand your business fully.

We aren't limited to just a single source of data either. We can combine your databases, Salesforce, third-party services like SMS metrics, and even flat files. BI tools have the flexibility to ensure you have the full picture.

Customization for your customers

Your customers are looking for individualized service and demonstrated value. Being able to show them exactly what they're paying for keeps customers happy. My clients regularly generate reports for customers based on individual customer requests. Once your data is centralized in your BI tool, changing out graphs and tables takes just a few minutes. Customers also appreciate the ability to look at progress over time. BI tools provide filters so you can break your reports down by year, month, or even location. This keeps customers engaged with their own data and allows them to see direct results based on the actions they're taking at regular intervals.

Professional delivery

Emailing a spreadsheet with raw data doesn't impress anyone. Creating a PowerPoint with manually created graphs is time-consuming, error-prone, and the data is static. Being able to email every client a report every week is not a viable option without BI tools. Platforms like AWS QuickSight allow you to schedule automated email delivery of new reports to your customers. Your reports now have a professional look, are always on time, and are consistent.

If you're worried about HIPAA or other privacy-related laws regarding your data, you can keep your data on the platform. Data can be filtered at the database level, allowing you to provide your client with access to the actual report on the platform so both you and your customer feel secure knowing the data never leaves your environment.

Fast turnaround

As a small business, you're agile and fast-moving. Your business intelligence should be too. Once your BI platform is configured and you have data connected, you can begin to answer critical business questions in hours rather than days. When a potential investor asks about usage or board members are interested in new user enrollment, you can provide that turnaround by the end of the day. You no longer need to be exporting tables from a database, combining spreadsheets, or formatting. With business intelligence tools, that same analysis is just a few clicks away.

Spotting problems early

As I mentioned earlier, we can connect data from multiple sources. I suggested to one of my customers a report analyzing website usage and SMS message reminders sent to customers for events. They regularly reviewed their reports to ensure there was steady growth on the platform. However, we saw a spike in SMS text messages when we didn't see the same spike in the number of events. What happened was a bug had been introduced, causing excessive text messages to be sent from the platform. Thanks to this report, we were able to fix the issue before it caused financial damage, annoyed customers, and possibly reputational harm. Examples like this show how a report can help fix problems quickly that would normally go unnoticed.

Over the past decade working in business intelligence, I have helped transform passionate startups into funded successes, witnessed massive customer growth, and helped companies consistently hit their goals. What was common among them? They all started small, had drive, and let data guide their decisions. You don't need to invest much money to make this work. If you're interested in unlocking the data you already have, please don't hesitate to reach out to me today.

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