3 Ways Business Intelligence Will Save a Deal

Being a fan of the Red Sox (we’re based in Cambridge, MA after all), we know all too well the extreme highs of a great save, as well as the extreme lows of a blown save (and ever so often, the extreme highs of a blown save). Trust us, the former is so much better than the latter.

When it comes to closing deals or opportunities for small businesses, you don’t want to blow a single opportunity. Here’s how a good business intelligence solution can specifically save a deal that you might have let slip through the cracks.

1. Business Intelligence Blimp Cam

Good BI gets you looking beyond just the strike zone. A blimp-cam perspective on your data helps you consume every aspect of your business activities, and presents them in easily digestible form. Once you get a better grasp on your company’s activities it becomes much easier to notice when something is amiss. Here’s the main dashboard on our Insight Feed:

At a glance, you can see that for the trailing 7 days, activities such as Internal Submissions, Sendouts and Interviews are trending below the historical average (upper left box). You also know from your Activity Ratios (lower right box) that 14 Internal Submissions leads to a Placement (closed deal), so that means you’re on your way to less deals being made this week. That’s a problem, and now you can see it and work on it.

Nightly emails are another way to get a summary view of what’s going on with your data. Good BI means you shouldn’t have to work hard to get your data. This way, the important metrics are delivered to your inbox automatically so you can review it with your morning coffee. Once this is part of your daily routine, you can’t help but spot positive or negative trends and save your company from missing goals that will impact the bottom line.

2. Business Intelligence Play-by-Play

Have you listened to an expert play-by-play announcer lately on that old-timey device called a “radio” or on TV? They see things that you’d never see because they’ve been trained to do so. A good BI tool is like that and should let you know events that you might miss if you had to search through your data manually.

Having a warning system of deals in danger of being lost can be a boon to your company’s conversion rate. Now you have a priority list of deals that need your attention, which is especially useful for managers to make sure employees spend their time on activities that will close them.

In our system, these warnings are customized to each business depending on your average sales cycle so it learns as you conduct more business. Again, this feed lives on the main dashboard so you’ll never miss a deal opportunity.

3. Business Intelligence Slump Detector

You gotta keep swinging if you want to hit that home run. Especially if you’re in a slump, you just have to work harder. Do you know who’s streaking and slumping at all times? How do you know? A good indicator of a deal in danger is Momentum, defined in the screenshot below:

No activities means no momentum, the bubble turns red, and you have an at-a-glance view into how many of your open opportunities might be lost. From here, you can click on each bubble to see exactly what’s been going on with that potential deal. When was the last activity? Who owns this opportunity? How many days has it been open? Is it worth pursuing or should we send it back to the minors? Your BI tool should answer it all.

How much is one saved deal worth to your business? If your BI solution can identify deals that would have otherwise slipped through the cracks, it can easily pay for itself in a short amount of time and makes for a great investment.

Ready to play ball? Learn more about how InsightSquared can save deals for you.

[ed. note: A BI post about baseball without a single reference to Moneyball? And they said it couldn’t be done.]