Over the past few years, the term ‘finance transformation’ or ‘financial digital transformation’ has gained traction in the finance sector much the same way as ‘digital transformation’ has. If you play any role in a finance team, you’ll at least have heard of this approach, if not attempted to initiate it in your own organisation.

The problem is that where ‘finance transformation’ once had a clear, targeted meaning, the waters have now become muddied. This means that in place of the expected transparency and optimism around updating the way you work, there is often now a sense of scepticism and anxiety.

Based on our discussions with many CFOs, either they’ve tried it before, with disappointing results from the technologies or provider they worked with, or they’ve heard of negative experiences from peers and want to avoid making the same mistakes.

True finance transformation comes from a combination of process, system and cultural change. It doesn’t make good financial sense to spend thousands on a technology overhaul if your finance team cannot then use that technology. Likewise, a change in your business doesn’t count as finance transformation if your team still feels overworked, stressed and pressured at month end.

A successful finance transformation positively impacts everyone across your business on a day-to-day basis. It lowers your costs and allows you to reduce headcount, doing even more with fewer people. Not only this, but it gives you greater insights into your business, offering easy-to-use data and reporting, ultimately lowering risk to make you more compliant.

With competitors raising their game, now is the time to act.

What is finance transformation

In simple terms, finance transformation, of financial digital transformation, is the combination of process, system and cultural change across the finance operations of a business, which is then implemented through new technologies, training and analysis. As a practice, it is suitable for finance teams seeking to streamline, simplify and optimise their systems through a shift in their approach, to drive strategic value.

Many vendors claim to offer finance transformation, but what this often means is that they’ll sell you the technologies to update your internal finance systems, without the operations training that your team requires. Without enabling strategic change, this often reults is businesses might spend a lot of their budget on the latest technology without being provided with a complete roadmap to transform their systems.

In additiona, it’s easy to be persuaded by ‘quick-win solutions’ which may be more affordable in the short term, but which you will outgrow quickly. CFOs know they need to make changes, but it can feel overwhelming to initiate an “overhaul” when a simpler, more affordable solution might keep problems at bay for a while. These options regularly don’t scale with your company though, and merely tick a box to help you feel like you’re taking steps forward.

Over the long term, what many businesses don’t realise is that they are going to end up spending more money with short term solutions. Proper finance transformation is an initial investment, but over five years the way they are currently doing it works out far more expensive. Sadly, a lot of finance teams work on such a ‘hand to mouth’ way that they don’t often have time to look into better ways of working.

Feeling overwhelmed by your options

Having spoken to many CFOs, we see patterns in the things they tell us: for many, they recognise that their business needs to make a considerable investment but are reluctant to initiate it. Many businesses still rely on convoluted, outdated processes which are potentially damaging to their business – but the alternatives seem too immense to get a grip of.

Being able to predict future outcomes and planning for growth are two activities that often fall by the wayside because completing the current workload feels too all-consuming. This is a regular pattern for many organisations, many CFOs don’t know where they’ll be in the next three to five years, and instead they would like to be able to picture that. To get there, many need help accessing the appropriate technologies that are available and navigating in the right direction for their business.

How financial transformation looks practically

Some practical examples of the changes finance teams can expect from finance transformation include:

• Your finance processes and systems are standardised and automated to avoid error and increase efficiency.
• Your month-end reporting becomes automated, instead of a week or more spent creating a board pack.
• Further automation across business functions will ensure cost-saving opportunities across your department.
• Collaboration across the team becomes far easier: you’re equipped with a centralised finance data hub which enables collaboration.
• Opportunities to operate as a remote team – this means potentially lower wages and more savvy payroll planning.

Understandably, CFOs need a quick, reliable and thorough service. Their team requires training, onboarding, consultation and a ‘people element’ which is often missing from finance transformation offers – it’s a change in attitude as well as a physical process.

Want to read more?  check out our other blogs

How to get the most from your Digital Transformation journey

The growing role of Finance and Accounting in Digital Transformation and business success.

The post Finance Transformation – what is it and can I achieve it ? appeared first on bi5.

Executives need access to the latest business insights to make effective strategic, financial, and operational decisions. This becomes increasingly difficult to achieve as organisational data silos grow and make it harder to collate accurate data for enterprise reporting. Combine this with competitive, fast-paced markets and the need for constant innovation, and the decision-making process becomes a time-pressured minefield that puts undue stress on senior managers.

Despite this challenge, many management teams are still going into board meetings with static reporting booklets and presentations which have been manually collated by business analysts. It leaves them without the depth of information they really need.

The problem with traditional business reporting

Traditional methods of management reporting (usually spreadsheets, static presentations, or management reporting booklets) no longer cut it in the data-driven business world.  They are extremely time-consuming to create, become outdated as soon as they are released, lack the level of detail required to explain underlying causes, and usually rely on one, or more, analysts or data specialists to produce.

This causes several problems for members of the board:

• Outdated information – as soon as sales or production figures change, static reports from the day, week, month, or even night before lack the latest information, meaning decisions are made without the latest data
• Lack of deep insights – if a further level of detail is required, such as understanding what caused the generation of X revenue in the last month, it is not instantly available in a static report. This delays decision-making or forces decisions to be made on assumptions rather than fact
• Lack of a holistic view – despite every effort, masses of departmental data sources make it extremely difficult to gain transparency overall activities. The chance of missing data is high, affecting the accuracy of reports and therefore the accuracy of decisions.
• Lengthy waits for creation – end users may lack the skills or time to analyse data and produce their own reports, creating a reliance on others within the business and increasing waiting times. Furthermore, this can often result in conflicting reports as information gets pulled from different sources, slowing down decision-making
• Reports collated from different sources – often, enterprise reports are drawn together from multiple sources of information. This generates conflicting points of view and ultimately leads to a lack of trust in the final report. The solution is to invest in a unified decision-making platform which delivers a single version of the truth to executives

To combat these issues, senior management teams are enhancing their decision-making abilities by digitally transforming their boardroom reporting approach.

The benefits of a modern business reporting solution

For the digital boardroom to function effectively, senior executives need access to real-time insights and intelligence from across the business to aid decision-making.

The self-service nature of modern end-user reporting tools can drive transformation in the boardroom. C-suite executives can move away from static reports, replacing them with interactive dashboards, presentations, and report booklets which:

• Are based on aggregated, real-time data from across the business – meaning they provide an accurate and up-to-date foundation on which to base business decisions, removing the ambiguity caused by different data sources
• Enable executives to switch between strategic and operational data instantaneously – with the ability to drill-down and drill-through data to enable a deep-dive exploration of what is driving the numbers, right down to the transactional level
• Facilitate the discovery of hidden insights – by creating transparency across departmental data and enabling cross-function analysis which can highlight correlations which may previously have gone unnoticed
• Are produced and refreshed automatically at the touch of a button – making reporting instantaneous and accurate, removing the need to rely on data analysts or IT teams to deliver information, and improving business responsiveness
• Look forward as well as back – using advanced analytics and predictive technologies to simulate future trends which help to inform decisions based on solid insights

Only with access to accurate, timely information can senior executives hope to identify opportunities for growth, efficiency gains, and performance enhancement in increasingly faster timescales. What’s more, a competent enterprise reporting solution can create the foundation for Integrated Business Planning, creating a truly unified approach.

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A new way to budget and forecast for shift based employees

Over the last few years we have been working with a number of Aged/Disability care organisations to improve their budgeting and forecasting processes specifically around staff costs which is many cases accounts for 70-80% of total expenses.

There are many roster tools available in the market however they are mainly focussed on coverage rather than cost and having the ability to compare costs with funding and make adjustments to suit is vital.   

The importance of having an efficient and effective budget process and the ability to quickly run ‘what-if’ analysis and test multiple scenarios, has been brought into sharp focus for many businesses as a result of the uncertainty that exists as a fallout of the pandemic. This is especially important for businesses with shift based employees.

The majority of businesses that approach us about improving their budget and forecast process had been running their budgets in spreadsheets, and were finding the process very slow and time consuming. 

One of the most common issues with spreadsheet based budget and forecast models is that they are all individual spreadsheets which are commonly sent out to the relevant business managers for completion. These spreadsheets are very rarely linked back to any form of master or global input.

The more uncertainty there is, the more flexibility and speed you need

In the normal annual budget and quarterly (or more frequent) re-forecast, this de-centralisation of the global inputs doesn’t pose much of an issue. The budget administrator can take the time to ensure the global inputs are correct, wait for the completed budget to be returned, and then consolidate and report. 

In times of significant uncertainty, however, where conditions are changing dramatically between re-forecast cycles, more and more businesses are finding the lack of flexibility and speed in an Excel budget process cumbersome and inefficient, which can cost a business financially in the long run.

We’ve noticed particular interest for a faster and more flexible alternative from industries with a large number of shift-based employees (including community services, aged care and NDIS providers). These types of organisations are diverse and specialised in the services they provide, their employee mix, and in the way their employees are remunerated. On top of this, they often have reliance on government plans and fundings, which change regularly. 

For businesses where the major cost is staff, the spreadsheet approach is often not appropriate. The greater the percentage of total costs attributed to labour costs, the more importance should be placed on them. When the majority of labour costs are attributable to shift employees, managers can find themselves in a difficult spot if they’re relying on a spreadsheet model.

The complexities of shift based employees

Shift based employees often have more than 4 different effective rates of pay once shift loadings are taken into account. On top of that, there are often different allowances applicable and different coverages required for annual leave and public holidays.  Couple this with the fact that employees in these industries are often on Government awards, SCHADS or EBAs which have different levels and pay grades that may increment on an annual basis, and you have a complex labour cost calculation.

Staffing requirements, coverage and availability in these industries can change quickly in ‘normal’ times, so the ability to re-forecast these changes quickly and easily is now more important than ever. The ability to quickly adjust budgets and forecasts to reflect the latest shift and roster changes, to fill the gaps in staff shortages with agency staff who have different cost rates and allowances, is of paramount importance.

Many organisations, both for-profit and not-for-profit/for-purpose, currently rely on spreadsheet calculations. Spreadsheets, while easy to change for individual budgets and employees, have limitations when it comes to shift cost calculations. Often, organisations have to budget with ‘worst case’ costs as they are unable to calculate an accurate cost, and are unable to change global assumptions/rates/loadings and have these quickly applied to the underlying calculations.

So what’s the solution for better budgeting labour costs for shift based employees?

At bi5 Solutions, we’ve worked with organisations to provide a more efficient and robust budget process, with incorporated shift calculators providing faster and more accurate budget calculations and updates. Unlike spreadsheets, our solutions are able to easily calculate shift/labour costs by individual employees, or positions, by calendar day, allowing for more accurate weekend and public holiday loading application and cost calculation. The manager can easily adjust weekly or fortnightly shifts by individual employee or position, and have these costs instantly fed back into the consolidated budgets. They are now able to use employees’ exact cost rates, and apply annual pay grade/level increments accurately. This removes the need for the ‘worst case’ labour cost budgets that are often used due to the difficulty and complexity in doing a more accurate calculation in Excel.

In the current environment of uncertainty, planning and re-calculating to respond to staff absentees can happen much more quickly, allowing organisations to budget for agency staff with higher rates. For industries that are impacted by changes in government funding, or need to generate a budget/estimate quickly and accurately, these solutions allow organisations to lessen the risk of making the wrong calculation and wrong decision. 

Build a custom budgeting and forecasting solution on your chosen platform

Utilising our preferred EPM platforms (BOARD, Jedox) we can deliver a Budgeting and Forecasting solution that can integrate with your existing systems (ERP, Roster tools, payroll, HR, PowerBI…etc) to bring through data such as employee details, pay rates, shift details and actual financials, to further simplify the budget process. We work closely with managers and admin to ensure that it’s built in the way they need for their particular requirements. We can usually get budgeting and forecasting solutions up and running in the order of 1-2 months.  

Overall, with a budgeting and forecasting solution the ability to adjust/reforecast budgets more regularly and effectively is significantly improved, providing for faster planning and better financial management.

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We have talked about the importance of data and data integration in many of our recent blogs, however we have never really discussed how we do it, so we thought it was about time we did.

Over the last few years, we have been working on a project for one of our mining services clients which involves integrating data from a number of different sources (Excel spreadsheets, Cloud and On-premise applications, Machine/Vehicle Sensor Data etc.) into a centralised data warehouse which is then used for invoicing, budgeting, forecasting, reporting and analytics.

On this project we worked together with another local company, who specialise in data science, AI and machine learning. We have recently formed a closer relationship with this company which enables us, together, to provide our clients with a full End to End Business Operations System (EEBOS). At the core of the EEBOS solution are two distinct tools, Datahub and Mailbot.  These technologies specifically addresses the data integration we are talking about.  This integrated data is then used to drive the reporting, analytics and budgeting/forecasting ‘front- end’ which the user sees and interacts with.

But what exactly is Datahub and Mailbot?

Datahub

DataHub was built from the ground up to seamlessly synchronise data from the various sources and systems. Datahub’s core engine automates record matching and data translations using state-of-the-art algorithms. Data then smoothly flows between synchronised systems to ensure all updates are translated and sent where they need to be. Administrators are kept in the loop with scheduled reports, notifications of edit conflicts via email and the ability to fine-tune the automatically learned translation mappings.

DataHub’s system-specific connectors means adding new systems to synchronise is not a problem cloud-based applications, on-premises systems and real-time (sensor) feeds are all able to be synchronised. Swapping systems from one vendor to another also becomes much smoother since DataHub seamlessly takes care of all the translations and matching, allowing clients to choose best-of-breed systems for each  function of your business and avoid vendor lock-in.

Also, when you need to put together data quickly to keep operations moving, you need to use whatever is at hand – whether it’s Excel spreadsheets, reports or CSV file dumps, you work with what can get you there. But afterwards you’ve got a problem: all these different pieces need to be consolidated back together so that you can summarise and quantify what has actually been happening and determine what needs to be done next.

Need to check the raw data that’s in the data warehouse? DataHub has a fully secure web site that lets authorised users view any data in the system. You can even have it configured so that administrative staff can manage the data directly in the DataHub, letting you store and maintain supporting data that you need but isn’t in your Excel spreadsheets.

DataHub isn’t just a data warehouse, it’s also a complete data integration and synchronisation suite that lets you share data across all your business systems, from third-party software packages to cloud-based apps, corporate data warehouses and even external partner’s IT systems. Make double entry a thing of the past and bring together all your data into a cohesive unit for whole-of-business reporting. It even makes swapping out one vendor’s system for another a seamless experience, so you can choose best-of-breed products for your company.

Mailbot

Most IT solutions expect you to manually convert your data into a format and naming convention that they will accept before allowing bulk import, or worse force you to manually type the data into their product. Wouldn’t it be great if you could instead just email your spreadsheets and reports to a central repository and dashboards and summary reporting? All by nothing more than sending an email with an attachment? Some of you would have heard of the term ’email scraping’.  In essence this is exactly what the MailBot is designed to do.

MailBot is an autonomous data-crunching robot (installed as a Windows service in your IT network) that monitors one or more mailboxes for incoming data in emails (Microsoft Exchange / Office 365 is natively supported). MailBot reads any attachments and automatically processes them, converting and validating the attachment’s contents into structured data and saving it to the DataHub data warehouse. Any dashboards or reports that run off of the data warehouse will immediately pick up the new data – all triggered from a simple email and without a single change to your existing processes.

So how does it work? We know that every company’s data will reflect their unique way of operating, so a one-size-fits-all approach to data processing will never work. MailBot is designed to handle this, being easily extensible with custom connectors tailored specifically to your data formats. Hence there is no need to re-format your spreadsheets.

MailBot will detect errors in data, collate them and automatically send error reports via email to the people who need to know. Fixing the problems and re-emailing in the attachment is all that is necessary to update the DataHub warehouse.

If you make a mistake, just fix it in your spreadsheet and re-email it in – MailBot will automatically notice what is an edit of existing data versus new records and update the warehouse accordingly.

With Datahub and Mailbot you can streamline your process without having to change your process.

To find out more about how Datahub and Mailbot can help your business get in contact with us.

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Many organisations today still use spreadsheets or specialised legacy systems for budgeting and planning; however, these systems were never designed for analytics or reporting.

Those same organisations, if they are using analytics at all, are often relying on their IT to support stand-alone BI solutions.

Today, planning and analytics tools are playing an increasingly critical role in transforming the way organisations gather, store, analyse and interpret data for strategic business decision making.

In the information age we are now living in, managers must   start viewing information as an important strategic resource that if used intelligently will improve their business’s performance and competitive advantage.

The volume, variety, velocity, and veracity of data affecting the organisation’s operations and bottom line continues to increase on daily basis and not all of this data is relevant for strategic decision making.

Data is also dispersed across many ‘point solutions’ that address specific operations of the business. These systems are critical however, to get a complete and overall picture of what is happening in the business, relevant data from these various systems must be integrated into a single source of the truth which is then used for both planning, reporting and analysis.

As an example, we have a client who has a fleet of over 150 trucks and ~300 pieces of equipment and that use sophisticated tracking software and sensors to capture data about routes, speeds, cycle times, etc. A second ‘system’ built into the vehicles which captures engine performance, and a third to measure loads. The financial data on fuel, insurance and other costs associated with the vehicles are yet in a fourth system.

Meaningful data from all these systems needs to be identified, extracted, and integrated into a single complete picture.

The base data used for planning and forecasting, in many cases, is the same as the recent historical actual data used for reporting and analytics.

Managers must be able to identify and separate the relevant data from their systems and find methods on how best to  connect to data from the other systems. The next step in the process is to then “Declutter” by sorting out ‘the clean from the dirt’ and then integrate into a common “Datahub” which can then be used for both planning, reporting and analysis.

Basing decisions on information that is not correct, not current, or not complete is a sure recipe for failure. On the contrary, when the business possesses relevant facts and knows how to use them, improved product innovation, customer relations and operational excellence will be achieved.

Fully knowing and understanding full potential inherent in business planning and analytic tools is the starting point for those companies that strive to repair the broken link between business planning and forecasting and actual performance.

Investments in planning (budgeting and forecasting) and analytic tools if not well researched and planned for can actually cost the company financially, time, resources etc.

As I mentioned above, not all data is important. Remember data collection and storage can be a very costly and time-consuming exercise.

What must you do then to ensure you’re not wasting your time and other resources on non-essential data?

As a manager, you must first establish your company’s competitive parameters within its operating markets and doing so will then help you decide which information to focus on.

To successfully execute your company’s strategies, your strategy should be based on information. In other words, information should be used to as a strategic resource to determine your company strategy.

This means business analytics supporting strategy not only at the functional level but also at the strategic level. In some organisations, business analytics supports strategy performance only at the functional level, monitoring the individual function’s achievement of targets.

There is nothing wrong with this. The problem arises when there is no feedback to the strategic level.

It is therefore important to define targets based on the company’s strategy and the process is made easier if the managers have access to relevant facts that can be used to determine the kind of information relevant for the strategy development and monitoring of performance.

In organisations where business analytics tools give feedback to the strategic level and information is used as a strategic resource, if one department learns to improve its processes through the use of information, the strategy team receives the news and spreads the message throughout the organisation as best practices.

Use of information should both be a bottom-up and top-down process. For example, information should flow down from the top via strategy maps and back up via scorecards and business performance management solutions.

When there is this flow of information up and down, deviations from targets can be measured and analysed and in turn the strategy is adapted and changed to accommodate changes in the market and within the organisation itself.

Dialogue between the strategy and business analytics functions is therefore highly encouraged.

When there is dialogue, there is improved coordination of efforts which can lead to the identification of the organisation’s critical success factors, development of KPIs and the definition of who is responsible for the various KPIs.

Aligning planning and analytics and strategy and in turn linking business analytics and strategy can help provide information about which products create the business’s income over its entire lifetime and information about relevant product attributes to develop for the different customer segments.

Furthermore, investing in business intelligence and analytics and using information as a strategic resource can also provide management with the relevant information and knowledge about which business processes to strengthen and develop in relation to the company’s strategy and competitor’s strengths and activities.

End-to-End Business Operations System for Mining

Why should rolling forecasts become your new normal in budgeting

The post Unifying Planning and Analytics appeared first on bi5.

March 2020

Many companies today are striving to become data-driven, but what does that mean exactly?

It is more than just visualisations and interactive dashboards with nice charts and graphs.

It is about putting in place the right data automation process to align with your business strategy, systems and culture. It’s about creating a mindset in which analytics form the basis of all fact-based business decisions and are embraced by all levels of the organization.

Just like electricity, data has become a basic enterprise asset that is quickly revolutionizing the world, enabling better, faster, cheaper business processes. Data-driven organizations are committed to gathering data concerning all aspects of the business. The more your business can make use of data automation tools the greater your competitive advantage will be. These tools enable employees at every level to make use of all the data available in a fast and efficient way, to gain greater insight and foster conclusive and more efficient decision-making.

How to unlock the value of data

Unlike traditional enterprises, data-driven organizations don’t grow linearly, but exponentially. Just look at the spectacular growth of companies like Amazon and Google. These companies have built their entire business models around the exploration and exploitation of information and data.

What these companies have in common is a data-centric approach that goes beyond operational excellence. This requires them to put data automation and analysis front and centre in everyday business processes. To think beyond silos and even the company’s own walls (literally and metaphorically) to build meaningful collaborations.

But how does your business achieve this?  The first step is to make use of the latest technologies in Data Automation Tools.

The benefits of Data Automation Tools

Data Automation Tools can provide your business with insights that you might have otherwise been unable to see, both forward-looking (forecasting) and backwards-looking (analysis and reporting). Some of the ways in which it does this are:

Increased speed of data-driven analytics

Data Automation Tools can do in a fraction of the time what was previously a manual process done by data analysts.  With this increase in speed, you can conduct more in-depth analysis, which will give you insights previously unavailable. Depending on your business, through the use of data automation tools, you could get more detailed with your analysis, and analyse by day rather than week or month, or hour rather than day.

In addition to providing easy access to more detailed and informative data on which to conduct the analysis, the use of data automation tools will also free up more time of your data analysts time.  This will allow them to place more focus on finding new insights into your data and business to ultimately help with your businesses data-driven decision making, as opposed to preparing the data for analysis.

More accurate forecasting and planning

Data Automation tools can also help improve your ability to gain forward-looking insights. Whilst the processing of historical/actual data helps to understand how and why or your historical performance, the real competitive advantage is in how you can utilise these insights for forward planning.

These tools can vastly improve your forecasting and planning processes in much the same way as they improve your analytical capabilities. A faster process means your business is more flexible to changing market conditions. Using data automation tools for your forecasting and planning will allow you to more quickly incorporate the latest actuals into your forecasts, compare different scenarios, and test the sensitivities of these to a multitude of inputs and drivers.  All of these improve the ability of your business to make the data-driven decision that is best for your business.

At bi5 we have recently helped an NFP community services organisation do just that. As an NFP there is essentially no margin to ‘buffer’ any budget to actual variance. Any under-budgeting of expenses will lead to a loss, as opposed to a lower profit (hopefully) in a for-profit business. This meant the accuracy of their budget was extremely important. Through the use of a data automation tool they have been able to get an even more accurate budget, with employee costs (their main expense) now able to be determined down to individual calendar days. This is paramount for businesses with shift based employees, where shift loadings change depending on the day of the week and start and end times.

Save time and money

Computer resources are less expensive than employee time when it comes to data analysis.  Through reducing the time to generate reports, provide data for analysis, or to generate and finalise budgets, you are also saving costs. We have seen many businesses who budget for large amounts of overtime expense in reporting and budgeting season. Through the implementation of data automation tools, they’ve been able to reduce both their overtime expense whilst also providing results and finalised budgets in a more timely manner, with the added bonus of a happier and less-stressed workforce.

The post Become a Data Driven Business with Data Automation Tools appeared first on bi5.

Human beings have limits. It’s hard for most of us to accept, especially when we’re being pushed to increase productivity and business impact while having less time available. Fortunately, data automation provides ways to save time, improve data quality, cost and overall improve business processes.

“The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data” – The Economist

Today’s businesses face pressure to adapt to changing digital environments and maintain a competitive edge. Data Automation not only helps your company to adapt to the changing environment, it also builds a competitive edge by automating your business systems and being innovative. Data automation takes care of everyday processes and allows staff to spend their time on tasks that are focussed on delivering value to the company and the customer.

The data collected across your organisation’s business units, applications, and external sources is growing exponentially. It’s pouring out everywhere: from digital customer transactions and Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, to social interactions and support services. Reliable, timely data is crucial for faster, more informed decision making. It allows retailers to predict which clothing range will fly off the shelf next season. It means phone companies can examine millions of call logs to offer customers ‘in the moment’ offers. And it enables supply chain managers to spend less time on checking orders and tracking stock levels.

Businesses need to efficiently capture and store the data as it emerges in any volume, velocity or variety and distribute it to downstream applications—sometimes in real-time. Therefore, being certain that data flows are continuous and scalable, from the source to the analytics is a key requirement for data automation.

When to use Data automation

Here are some of the common, data automation-friendly tasks your business should consider first.

Complex tasks:

Tasks that involve a significant number of steps in a process which have to be done in a specific, repeatable order are excellent candidates for automation. Tedious, repetitious tasks are also those most likely to suffer from user error.

Frequent tasks:

The more frequently a task occurs, the greater the potential gains for automation. Even if it’s a small task that only takes ten minutes time, if those ten minutes occur every day, automation can provide significant time savings over the course of a year. This can also eliminate tasks that users are likely to postpone, such as security updates.

Reporting:

Data crunching is a tedious, time-consuming task If ever there was one. And yet the information that can be gleaned from a performance report is exactly the high-quality insight that can help your business make smart decisions for the future. Automation can collect and collate the data you need so that you can more rapidly generate reports and see what’s happening with your system.

Is your business ready to implement Data automation?

With increased productivity and reduced human errors, your average costs for the same work will be much less, which can exponentially increase your return. What business owner wouldn’t want that? Data automation is a key step toward improving the efficiency of your company.

The post Data automation to assist Your Business appeared first on bi5.

Digital Transformation is not new

Digital transformation is a term that has been around for some time now what but what does it really mean considering we have been using digital technology for more than half and century.

Obviously the technology has changed, got faster and more powerful and more accessible to more people but you could really call it new. So why has the term digitial transformation suddenlly become a thing ?

Upgrading to more modern technology is really what it is all about but for the purposes of this blog we’ll stick to digital transformation as it is now a widely accepted term and it is certainly gaing increasing attention in businesses around the world.

Digital transformation is a never ending cycle.

Transforming or upgrading your systems is never ending and the biggest problem is how to do it in an efficient amd non-disruptive way.

The main problems seem to be, the overwhelming amount of information, skill shortages, outdated culture and the fear of change.

However, the truth is ‘’digital transformation’’ is no longer a choice, it’s a crucial driver for growth, profit and competitiveness and will ultimately set up your business for great success.

bi5 is in the ‘digital’ business and I must admit, to fully understand the meaning of digital transformation, I had to read many articles and observe companies that dared to implement a digital transformation strategy.

The consistent outcome I have seen in successful strategies is that a well implemented digital technology empowers business owners, executives and managers to make better decisions, be more confident and increase performance through the help of machines.

Data analytics allow organizations to increase operational efficiency, design new revenue streams and observe developments and trends.

“The goal is to turn data into information, and information into insight.” – Carly Fiorina, former executive, president, and chair of Hewlett-Packard Co.

Business is indeed becoming more complex regardless of the industry you are in. The endless options and ways to manufacture your products, sell your products and distribute your products, paint the picture of today’s multifaceted environment.

That said, Forbes stated that 53% of companies are using big data analytics today, up from 17% in 2015 with Telecom and Financial Services industries fueling the fastest adoption. Most companies have big data, it’s the way you use it and extract value from it, that differentiates you from others.

Whilst you can’t argue that there is a lot of data that can have an impact on your business, whether it’s a marketing – cost per lead, total leads, new customers, sales – average sale value, total order value paid or operations – output value / hour, returns, order backlog, the key to fully utilize data is integration and analytics.

In a lot of companies today, reporting is siloed and specified to a particular area or function of the business.

Therefore, the goal should be to create links between useful and interrelated data. This will provide you with actionable insights and the ability to analyse past and current developments. Moreover, having a 360-degree view of the business offers a better understanding of the overall position and the ability to view opportunities.

The solution is to have a system that can integrate ‘identified’ data from various sources and present it in an effective and timely manner. The system also needs an analytical capability to be able to drill-down to lower levels of the data to understand why outcomes happened.  Technology solutions that successfully manage these tasks are for example Board, Microsoft BI o Tableau.

Digital Transformation in The Future

Having covered the historical reporting aspect we now focus on the future and what could or might happen.

The data and key performance indicators (KPI’s) that you use to monitor and measure your past and current performance is the same as what will drive your business going forward. What will change are the main drivers that affect those measures and KPI’s. Exchange rates, commodity prices, cost of resources, change in consumer behavior, trends etc. Depending on the industry you are operating in, certain main drivers will be identified as critical to your business.

If your planning and reporting ‘systems’ are integrated you can plan different scenarios, what-if situations and visualise and analyse the impact going forward. Scenario planning is a set of processes for creating several scenarios and using them to aid decision making. In a time of uncertainty, the understanding of potential threats/opportunities and their implication for the organisation creates the base  for  a robust decision.

One example are Farmers, who use scenarios to predict whether the harvest will be good or bad, depending on the weather and soil conditions. It helps them forecast their sales but also their future investments.

Final thoughts

Concluding this article, digital business transformation is the ultimate challenge in change management. Business leaders must constantly challenge their organizations to ensure this change can unlock productivity gains and significant competitive advantage. A software-defined, data-driven and automated organization will move faster because the important facts and associations in the data emerge.

The cost of doing nothing are high…so move quickly, make continuous adjustments and keep going.

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