Tag: productivity apps

What Employees Should Know about BI

While business intelligence and all of the critical information that it provides your organization is primarily best-served by your decision makers, its value should be felt company-wide. Some departments aren’ t even aware that big data is being collected on their efforts, and thus, when conversations regarding BI strategies are brought up, they fail to recognize its true impact.

Sure, your data analysts or independent BI team will be at the forefront of obtaining, displaying and breaking down what all those numbers mean, but the real question is — does your team even care?

They should. If implemented correctly, your BI tools should help make your company run smoother and more efficiently. Knowledge is power and arming your entire organization of its value will not only bring your team closer together, but may also bring about changes from new perspectives that were once previously left out.

In this post, we’ll detail some of the important aspects of business intelligence that every level of your organization should be aware of and why.

BI meeting with managersThe Strength of Big Data

Money makes the world go round, but what helps companies generate consistent business? Customer service, marketing and partnering with like-minded companies all serve this purpose. However, big data enables managers to precisely carve out an efficient budget that enables all of these factors to work collaboratively.

What some team members may overlook is the fact that it’s not just the access to data the matters. Too much data can sometimes be just as time-consuming and inefficient as not having enough information at your fingertips. The true value is the capability of analyzing the data that business intelligence tools provide. 

These tools provide the information that shapes several things including budgets, which projects to tackle, when to tackle them and even salaries. From the warehouse to the shipping department to the front office, BI works behind the scenes to put the entire organization in context and make it easier for team members on the front lines.

Doing Work On the Go

The future of business technology as a whole is leaning towards having the ubiquitous capability of conducting business while being mobile. As many decision makers are more often traveling outside the office, this capability suits them very well. And the same goes for some of the employees, too.

If your organization is on the rise and is expanding in size, the role of “decision maker” will likely also extend to more players. And that’s a good thing since BI tools are catering to this need. Being able to conduct the same amount of productivity while spending less time spent behind the desk and more time in the field is an extremely attractive feature that wouldn’t be possible without the innovations in BI and big data.

Business intelligence and teamworkReporting Made Easier with BI

Generating reports for higher-level executives can be a stressful task for employees as it likely entails crunching numbers, making sense of them and explaining their significance. BI tools allow these employees to simplify the process without having to request the assistance of an IT specialist — taking time away from both parties.

Depending on your current BI software, the convenient, user-friendly makeup of the BI interface should be formatted easy enough to provide the high-quality data that’s needed without it being too difficult to manage.

Building a Closer Organization

All in all, the progress in the business intelligence community is bridging the gap between entry-level employees, managers and executives.  The value of these connective tools offer a company openness that may have never been able to exist in past generations and its value cannot be underestimated.

The innovations aim to simplify the way work is done, offer more real-time information, grant employees more chances to work on-the-go and allow teamwork to be maximized.  While all employes may not use your BI tools, their knowledge of the technology can at least help them understand that the statistics that come to their desks are based in high-quality tools that have been in development for several years.

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Mobility & Production: The Now & The Future

Mobility in the workplace is a trend that has been on the rise since we were able to bring smartphones and tablets into the office. No longer reserved for phone calls, smartphones have become the secondary screen of choice for most, behind the desktop computer.

However, with globalization and the need to be on-the-go continuing to increase in importance, the use of a mobile device for production purposes is beginning to creep into the first-place position.

With more innovations coming our way, what’s the future of mobile production looking like? What can we expect to be simplified in the coming months and years? And what’s the current state of mobile production?

In this post, we’ll address these questions and find out how the trend of mobility and on-the-go production is affecting companies across the world for the better.

Current State of Mobility

One of the downfalls of being able to access your work information from your mobile phone is the plethora of other distractions that are also waiting for you. From applications that focus on games to music to news and beyond, there are many other options that employees may be influenced by. In fact, according to Flurry Analytics, 32% of mobile users spend their time on gaming apps, where productivity apps garner just 4%.

Mobility and productivity are too factors that more businesses strive off ofMany have speculated that the practical use of a smartphone for manual, productive work is severely limited. And this can explain why users are spending far less time working on their mobile devices and more time playing games. The smaller screens and fewer features make it more difficult to work on intricate tasks like spreadsheets or graphs.

However, for those managers or executives who simply need to use their mobile device to track numbers or to stay updated on current operations, big data applications serve them well. More BI applications are providing real-time information that is beneficial for those mobile managers who find themselves constantly in and out of meetings and need real-time access to KPIs to keep those meetings productive.

Changes to Expect in the Near Future

Across the board, mobile applications that are made for productivity must be able to provide reasonable usability given their awkward and space-limiting format. One of the underlying issues is that developers may be creating productivity apps as a secondary platform and not for primary use. User experience decreases when moving from a desktop platform to a mobile device and this transition needs to be more smooth.

Another feature that needs to be implemented, should you be in the market for a mobile application, is the solution’s ability to cross platforms. To accommodate your employees who have different types of devices, your mobility tools should be compatible with Apple products as well as Android devices, and this goes for programming languages as well (HTML, Javascript, etc.).

A Silver Lining in the Current Structure

On the other hand, there are some positive attributes of mobile technology. As far as displaying data is concerned, as long as your internet connection is strong, this shouldn’t become a problem. In fact, displaying data may be one of the most important features that a BI app can offer at this point in time.

Making use of tablet and smartphones are helping employees continuing to work, even when they have to be on the go.In Summation

The whole process of bringing mobility into the workplace is a complicated one. However, the more progress that is made, the easier it is for business owners to reap the rewards of their investment.

Data works best when it’s all in one place — and while BI application developers may already know this, it’s the simple, practical and user-friendly aspects of mobility that still have kinks that need to be worked out.

In the future we can expect less apps that perform separate tasks, but instead, more resources that are all-encompassing and strive for a smoother transition from desktop to mobile device. And further down the line, we can reasonably expect the development of workplace applications that are so similar to their desktop counterparts that users can’t distinguish the difference.

For more information on how to select the proper BI solution for your organization, contact one of our specialists today!

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