So you implemented your business intelligence tool/solution a couple of months ago. You’ve had your IT team working with their IT team to sync up data. You’ve been going to meetings and seeing email updates about the BI platform taking shape. Meanwhile, you’re paying hundreds to thousands of dollars each month even though you can’t even pull a single report. When are you going to see the big wins? Where are the insights that might move the needle? Where’s the ROI?
Let’s face it: if you don’t see ROI from your business intelligence, then any money you spend on BI is a waste. Here are some real-world ROI wins you should be seeing…
…Within 7 Days of Implementation…
Your data is already getting better. A BI solution doesn’t have to take weeks or months to set up. SaaS solutions, including InsightSquared, can be set up in as little as 24-48 hours, without any set-up fees. This means the investment, in terms of both time and money, can be minimal compared to the returns. Within seven days, you should see your data errors being flagged for you by your BI tool, letting you know if you and your employees are entering data correctly:
With this visibility, your team can fix those errors as they come in, and you should see your Data Quality Score increase rapidly, within days of your initial implementation. We see it all the time, and getting the data right leads to other instant wins: all employees learn how to enter data in correctly each and every time, less time wasted on reconciling bad data, and providing a base of clean data to make better business decisions.
…Within the First Month…
You are seeing exactly which and how many activities lead to a deal closing. If nothing else, your business intelligence tool should show you what your team does that directly impacts the bottom line. That gives you actionable items to work on to make more revenue. Does your analysis show that you close a Deal for every 25 Demos? How many Calls does each Opportunity lead to?
One of the major purposes of BI is to shed light on the inefficiencies at your company. A great way to do this is to monitor your Activity Ratios and see if these ratios are getting more efficient (less activities per deal) or less. This allows you to diagnose problem areas in your sales cycle to quickly improve revenue.
And if your BI tool can parse those ratios by employee or client, then you’ll have even more specific actions items that will materially improve your business.
…Within the First Quarter…
You save at least one deal that you might have lost due to poor visibility. Let’s just say it: your business intelligence tool should pay for itself, and then some. Not only should it make your business more efficient, but it should also make your business more encompassing, being able to close deals you might not have closed before.
A client in the Staffing & Recruiting space might see a screen like the one to the left. A deal that’s worth nearly $95,000 has stalled momentum (i.e. zero relevant activities on that deal in the past 10 days) and is in danger of being lost. With this level of visibility, not to mention the alerts your BI tool should be sending the client, this deal won’t get lost in the shuffle and get the attention it deserves.
How much is one deal worth to you? A few hundred dollars in revenue? A few thousand? More? Could one saved deal pay for your BI outright? Talk about great ROI.
…Within the First Year…
You become a data-driven business. With months of solid metrics fueling your BI, your company should be able to derive ROI from many different places:
- Nightly/weekly email summaries keep you and your employees abreast of all the latest activities, putting everyone on the same page. ROI: time saved by eliminating “catch-up” meetings; fostering healthy competition between employees.
- New employees have access to all the data in the company’s history, including how the top-performing veterans got where they are. ROI: newbies get up to speed faster, learn best practices from veterans, and poor performing employees are vetted quicker.
- Dashboards are always on, always updated automatically. ROI: never scramble to do quarterly reports ever again.
- Month over month, quarter over quarter, year over year data is accessible at a click. ROI: Accurate sales forecasts lead to efficiencies for the next year.
Remember, a great BI tool will pay for itself and then some. What’s the ROI on your business intelligence?
We’ll show you ROI within 24-48 hours of setting up.
