Nearly every organisation engages in the collection, collation and analysis of data for the purpose of making business decisions. However the process involved can take hours, days or even weeks to drill, slice and dice that data before arriving at the insight required.
This ‘Time to insight’ can be so protracted that it not only becomes counterproductive but can end up providing the wrong insight at the point or situation in which it was needed.
This ‘Time to insight’ can be so protracted that it not only becomes counterproductive, but can end up providing the wrong insight at the point or situation in which it was needed.
Reducing this time to insight can provide tremendous business benefits such as significantly reducing the time spent analysing the data, and encouraging informed decisions based on relevance to the specific point in time.
The time spent gaining insight can be reduced with a few steps and a simple change in the tools used to process data.
1. Visual Simplicity
A major component of reducing your time to insight lies in the ability to create simple and engaging visuals - and not just for their visual appeal, for when data is presented graphically, we retain and process more information quicker. Spread sheets bulging with data and riddled with formula errors and are particularly worth avoiding.
2. Simplify the data
Getting data from various sources and combing them together with a series of relevant and well planned KPIs will provide the data to display patterns, trends and anomalies more clearly.
3. Delivering to the right people at the right time
Not only must the software chosen for your data be scalable and agile, but it must be accessible to the right people at the right time. In the business world organisations are operating 24 hours a day whether they like it or not, providing online and mobile access to the relevant data is crucial.
4. Simple and intuitive
Ensuring that the software you use is simple to configure and intuitive to use will limit the potential for IT departments to add to the TTI bottleneck and eliminate the need for training.
by Paulo De Sousa
Paulo writes on the technical side of KPI Tracking. He is a co-founder of SimpleKPI and has worked in the development and SaaS field for over 20 years. He is passionate about helping businesses make data-driven decisions through the use of data, reports, and analytics. With his deep understanding of business intelligence tools, he's adept at providing solutions that can help businesses reach their goals.