Business Intelligence has become a broad subject as it continues to evolve into a supreme tool for analyzing raw data in companies. Over the last several years, we've seen BI find its own niches in the fields of data mining, querying and reporting, plus analytical processing. It's the latter that can help a business get a true picture of what's really going on internally.
Key Performance Indicators (or KPIs) are metrics you need to read daily to keep on top of what's happening with customers and your employees. However, these can become overwhelming, especially if they aren't properly organized or easy to read.
What's important is to find the right KPI metrics aligning with your future goals. While this takes some research time, you can save that time by looking at some of the most typical KPIs companies use. Many of these metrics relate to your finances, customers, company processes, and your employees.
Let's look at each category and see which ones could work best for your industry.
Studying the financial side of your company needs multiple views in order to fully understand what revenue you're making and possibly losing. This should start with profits and costs in a clearly defined way showing both gross income and net profit margins. By studying your costs as well, you can better figure where you need to cut. It's possible you're spending on services you have (like phone features) you don't even use.
Analyzing your revenue is just as essential. Yet, this needs a comparison between actual revenue and projected revenue. Catching discrepancies on these can help you catch what your performance level really is. Otherwise, this can easily go overlooked if you don't have a detailed accountant on hand.
For sales in your company, BI helps you read KPIs for cost of goods sold, outstanding day sales, and even which regions buy your products. Afterward, you should study your overhead and compare it to the budget plan you had.
All of this can give you a stark picture of financial reality.
Don't underestimate how important customer KPIs are since they go into substantially detailed territory. These can measure customer lifetime value, which shows you the value achieved working with a longtime customer.
In e-commerce, KPIs on customer acquisition cost can help you determine the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. A good analytics program can divide up your acquisition costs by the amount of customers you expected within a certain frame of time.
Studying customer satisfaction rates is vital, as are retention rates. Plus, gauging how many customers you've actually lost or gained can help you hone in on the ones who've stayed loyal.
Analyzing How Your Business Processes Work
The processes that make up how your business operates always need special attention. Study your overall efficiency level through time scales and percentages. You should also analyze how many defects you've had in your products and how that factors into revenues.
Don't forget to measure how well your help desk operates and how fast you can resolve customer issues. How you communicate with people over the phone plays a big factor in how many customers you retain.
Using BI on your customers is important, but it's the same with your employees. Without knowing what they're doing and how they perform, you could face major problems in turnover rates. The latter needs special focus, as does the response you put out for open job positions.
Employee satisfaction can get measured easier using Business Intelligence, which works symbiotically with your customers getting better service.
Let us help you find a BI solution you need in your company and learn more about all of our business intelligence services.
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