Your enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is already integrating all facets of your operations, from product planning and development to sales and marketing. If you are using it wisely, this software is providing you with insights your business needs to excel.   That’s great.   But you can do more.   If you want better, faster decision making, you have another tool at your disposal: big data. It’s more than mountains of information; it’s about how you use it. Specifically, you need data analytics. It’s the best way to consolidate all those data sources and formulate actionable strategies that will open up new growth avenues, lead to cost reduction, and enhance operational efficiency.   With so much potential, it’s no wonder that two-thirds of executives and decision-makers view data analytics as important. If you are considering employing analytics in your ERP system, first learn how data science and predictive analysis can help your business.  

1. Analytics Can Be Aligned With Key Objectives

  All the data you collect must serve a purpose. As Peter Sondergaard, the senior vice president at Gartner Research, says, “Information is the oil of the 21st century, and analytics is the combustion engine.” In short, you need to be using data analytics to achieve your core business goals. If you are not, you’re working with outdated tools — and you’ll get left behind in the race.   To align analytics with your business, start by listing your business goals, then break those goals down into quantifiable measurements, which can be easily handled by customizable and scalable database platforms like Microsoft SQL (MSSQL server). By analyzing that data, you can see if your goals are being reached — and why they are or aren’t. And from there, you can do so much more. Many businesses find that their MSSQL ROI easily justifies the time spent setting up an analytics system. In the end, data analytics can accomplish three main goals: improve current performance, energize new growth areas, and discover future business paths. Hence, if you make sure everything you do with that data serves those three objectives, the sky is the limit.  

1. Analytics Can Produce New Opportunities and Optimize Current Operations

  The accuracy, breadth, and depth of data points provide more chances to see where you can step up your game. If your analysis is quantifiable and actionable, concrete direction on how to fuel business growth will be much easier to see and take.   For instance, a goal for your website could be to increase the percentage of purchases per visitor. You can measure this total over time with ERP software capable of building an extensible data center, like Oracle E-Business Suite or Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne. Such systems will put that data on display in a unified dashboard. From that data, you can begin putting analytics to work. You can examine what traffic segments produce higher conversion rates and ROI, then focus on expanding that segment on your website. Use the multi-level filter method to drill down and discover more detail, and you could gain insights on how else you can reach more customers.   Clearly, with analytics, you are given much insight into how you can give each customer the right offer at the time, through the right channel. And going forward, if you continue to collect data, analyze and reinvent using analytics, you’ll see steady business growth.  

1. Analytics Can Make You Fast and Agile

  Today’s mobile on-the-go world demands businesses move and adapt quickly. Surprisingly, though, many business leaders cite a lack of adaptability as endangering global economic growth. Analytics can change that. After all, it’s analytics that possesses the ability to look at historical and current trends and to identify where the future will go. Building such a predictive model, which requires integration and analysis of data from all sorts of sources, such as purchasing behavior, web browsing activity, demographic info, and social media use, is the way to create realistic future scenarios. In this sense, you’ll be able to predict what the customer will want or need — before they even know it. Of course, this takes some intuition, but with data analytics, the beginning of the route you should take is given to you.   In an evolving world with a highly informed consumer base, where you must adapt or die, analytics gives you the ability to remain quick and nimble. If you employ data analytics to your advantage, you’ll be ready for anything.