7 signs you need bi - manufacturers

7 SIGNSYOU NEED BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

MANUFACTURERS

A publication of

Most businesses havent even heard about Business Intelligence, but most need it.

The pressure within the manufacturing industry of late has been astronomical. With a steady increase in globalization, a stagnating economy and a customer that only continues to expect more, manufacturers of all shapes and sizes are finding themselves in somewhat troubled waters.

In such a turbulent and competitive industry, now is the time to leverage technology, extracting value from every corner of your business in order to get and stay ahead of your competition. Traditional ERP and CRM solutions alone are no longer enough. But combining two is where the magic really starts to happen.

Business Intelligence (BI) solutions automate the task of analyzing data, providing a better understanding of company performance, creating a proactive sales culture offering a complete customer view for the entire business and streamlining the sales and marketing process.

If youre finding yourself sat on the fence of whether to introduce BI to your business or not, here are the 7 hard-hitting signs that you need it.

7 Signs You Need BI: Manufacturers7 Signs You Need BI: Manufacturers

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1. Business is booming

Great news! Growth is something that every company strives for but once youve gone through the difficult period as a start up and established yourself in a bustling marketplace, serious growth is the next leap towards success. Right now, youre faced with a great opportunity to cement your place in the manufacturing industry, so dont let it slip away.

A growing business means an increase in data, customers, products, prospects and even employees. Managing such a data-rich environment is difficult at the best of times, especially when you have more pressing business matters to deal with.

BI solutions take all this difficulty away, happily feeding on the heaps of data that youre producing and crunching it down into instant insights and identifying valuable opportunities to keep your business growing with very little input on your part.

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2. Poor flow of information

In companies of any size, communication is often one of the biggest challenges any employee will face. Staying abreast of key developments, sales progress, customer interactions and even top selling products is a constant battle.

Managing the flow of information is something that every company needs to stay on top of and the only way to control a data-rich organization is through technology.

With the help of BI, your entire business will be reading from the same page. Most good BI solutions integrate sales and customer information, so you always have a complete picture of each interaction, sale and next steps with your customers. Theres little more embarrassing than calling a customer to make sure theyre enjoying their latest purchase only to find out they didnt receive it and are still waiting on a replacement. It doesnt say a lot for your customer service either.


3. Losing track of sales performance

While it is all well and good that your team is hitting targets every month, are they really extracting the most profitability and value out of each deal that they close? Or are they simply making the easy sale and offering the cheapest possible option?

At the end of the day, a sale is a sale and most salespeople tend not to spend hours rifling through sales data in order to find out their top grossing line items due to the time that it takes to find such information. With this lack of insight, it often becomes difficult to keep track of sales performance, across endless spreadsheets, documents and scraps of paper.

Streamlining processes and saving valuable selling time is one of the big benefits of BI. Not only does it flag up your top grossing products, but actively identifies cross and switch-selling opportunities to extract the most value and profitability from each deal your team closes.

4. Complicated supply chain

There is no doubt about it; supply chains are becoming more sophisticated. As a manufacturer, you work directly with vendors, distributors, partners, retailers and end users all in tandem. Each of these groups will have varying needs and expectations from you as their manufacturer. As individual accounts, these are difficult to manage sufficiently without computer software of some sort in place.

For any supply chain to operate at its best, information must be shared across the business for a complete 360-degree view of operations. From customer interactions to sales activity and overall business performance, everything can be monitored from beginning to end with a BI tool.

Youll be able to spot areas for improvement while promoting collaboration and real-time data sharing across your entire operation. With valuable information at your fingertips, any manufacturer will be able to optimize their service levels and encourage customer loyalty. Supply chains can fall apart quickly if every corner of your business isnt being kept in the loop with what is happening in neighboring business units.

Hitting sales targets is all well and good, but are you extracting the most profitability and value out of each deal?



5. Increased competition

As the manufacturing industry continues to swell with new companies springing up almost every day, the pressure facing domestic companies is also building due to the growth in globalization. At home, competitors are no longer your only problem, as international companies continue to pinch your share of the local customer wallet by doing things at a far lower cost.

The key to succeeding in a bustling international market is the insight to act ahead of your competitors. Using BI to spot valuable sales opportunities while providing outstanding service is a must and will leave your competition hastily putting together a comeback, while youre closing the deal and moving onto the next.

Predicting sales trends and identifying opportunities isnt easy to do manually, but a BI tool can respond to your questions and provide you with a targeted sales plan that will get your customers on your side. BI will extract sales ready, actionable data in seconds, arming you and your team with the knowledge to outsmart the competition every single time.

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6. Improve sales reporting process

Reporting of any kind is tedious, but it has to be done in some way or another. Wasting hours at the end of every month to produce a complete overview of sales, activity and profits is time that could be better spent elsewhere.

Business Intelligence solutions streamline the sales reporting process and do most of the hard work for you. Since BI feeds on your sales and customer data, you hardly have to lift a finger to produce rich sales reports. Include as much or as little detail as you need and youre done in seconds rather than hours. Your boss need never know you took the easy way out and got your BI solution to do it for you.


65% direct sales

35% channel sales

7. Forecast customer demands

As in any industry, forecasting the spend trends of your customers is key to effectively managing cash flow and inventory levels accurately. The manufacturing industry in particular is built on processes and being able to respond to changes in the market almost instantly.

Making accurate forecasts to account for shifting demand patterns is more important now than it has ever been before. Not only will you be able to align your manufacturing operations to meet customer orders, but youll be avoiding lost sales with the insight to accurately plan for the future.

With a BI tool in place, you can monitor the spend patterns and trends of each of your customers, while accurately managing the manufacture of goods to meet this demand. Youll be able to identify when you need to increase or decrease production at specific times throughout the year, spot trends towards any new products and even create expert sales and marketing campaigns to sell your most profitable lines.


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sales-i is a powerful cloud based Business Intelligence solution that joins your ERP data together with your CRM data to give you actionable sales information for each and every customer. We turn a good sales person into a great one.


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