Reliable, accurate, verifiable Business Intelligence is key to making good decisions as a business. Ideally at the strategic level, the information you live and breathe on is lower-level data rolled-up into an at-a-glance format that can be quickly interpreted and consumed by the decision maker. But even with the best team, the most eye-catching charts, and a perfect presentation, a trust issue often arises between the decision maker and the source of the intelligence. A trust-but-verify mentality will (and should) prevail.
So how do you establish Business Intelligence trust? Enable the decision maker to delve further into the building blocks of data that make up his information. By drilling down into the individual line-items of data you validate your claim made at the broader, strategic level. Seeing the components of rolled-up information gives decision makers the necessary trust to remove roadblocks and continue toward an informed decision. The faster this process becomes, the more agile your business will become.
SharePoint dashboards are great at giving both the overview at-a-glance and the granularity on demand you need to get to the point faster. Imagine you have a gauge illustrating your budget vs. actual spending, it shows you are 10% over budget. Your CEO will almost certainly ask, “Where are the numbers coming from and where are we going over budget?” To answer his question, you smoothly click on the gauge to drill-down into a table showing expenses that have exceeded the allocated budget. Showing this detail both confirms that the data is accurate, and provides the information necessary to take action.
Soon after the meeting, your business can reign in the overspending at exactly the place necessary. Then your profits skyrocket, and you become a hero and local celebrity! Or maybe you just decrease time spent digging through reports by half… Or maybe you find out the problem isn’t in expenses, but in lack of sales – so you can go to your sales department with numbers. The possibilities are endless, but the result is always smarter faster reactions to what’s happening in your business.