These BI features are essential
Business intelligence software that enables detailed data analysis is nowadays an indispensable tool for data-driven and sustainable management of companies. With the overwhelming number of available options, the question quickly arises whether you are already fully exploiting the potential of your data or if there is much more possible. In order to achieve your company goals and maximise business results, there are several key features of BI software that you should not do without. We will explain what these features are and how they can help you manage your company.
1. Interactive dashboards
A central function of BI software is data visualisation. It allows you to present complex data sets in clear and appealing graphics, charts, or complete dashboards. This way, information is made understandable briefly, and compared to endless data tables, it makes it easier for users to interpret and analyse the data. Nowadays, these data visualizations should go beyond simple bar and pie charts, such as those possible in MS Excel, for example. Instead, you should ensure that the visualisations are interactive, allowing your employees to explore the data in different dimensions and gain detailed insights. For example, drillthroughs or drilldowns as well as filters make it easy to explore the data by allowing you to transition from an initial overview of the data to more detailed information.
2. Extensive visualization options
Since your company deals with various types of data, the visualisation options should be comprehensive as each type of visualisation offers specific advantages in identifying patterns, trends, or relationships within the data. Therefore, a modern BI software should support not only traditional bar, line, or pie charts but also geographical maps, tree maps, or gauges, for example. Furthermore, it should be possible to customise the visualisation according to your specific needs. Changes in colour schemes or fonts help you present the data in your corporate design. Adjustments to axis labels, data filters, or the ability to create entire dashboards yourself offer your employees great flexibility in presenting the data. If you are not yet experienced in creating your own dashboards, a Business Intelligence software should also provide you with professional dashboard templates that save you valuable time and resources when starting to work with the software.
3. Extensive reporting functions
Reports are helpful to share your findings with other employees and to be automatically informed about important data. Therefore, a modern BI software should allow you to create reports in custom formats and layouts that meet your specific requirements. Moreover, it should be possible to schedule and automatically generate such reports, whether at regular intervals or, for example, when a critical threshold is exceeded. This saves you time and ensures that the information is available when you need it. To easily share such reports with others, a BI solution should also be able to export them to various formats, such as PDF or Excel tables.
4. Real-time data
One of the key features of modern BI software is the ability to visualise data in real time. This allows users to track updates at any time and to instantly grasp the latest information. An additional alerting and early warning system can automatically inform you when unexpected events occur, or thresholds are exceeded. This enables your company to quickly respond to changing conditions and make informed decisions based on up-to-date data.
5. Location- and device-independent access and mobile presentation
The days when we only had to access data from a fixed computer in our office are definitely over. The future of BI software is mobile, allowing you to access the necessary data anytime and anywhere. Thanks to responsive design that automatically adjusts content to the screen size of the device you are accessing it from, you have the opportunity to take your dashboards with you wherever you go, whether you want to present the data during a meeting or access it from your smartphone during a business trip. This way, you are flexible and do not have to postpone important decisions until you are back in your office.
6. Self-Service
In the past, data experts and an IT team were needed to collect data and derive insights from it. In contrast, a modern BI software should enable every employee to handle data themselves and create reports or dashboards. This way, they are no longer dependent on the IT department to gain insights from their data. User-friendly interfaces, drag-and-drop functionality, as well as filtering options allow your employees to take control of their own data and feed your BI software with data from various sources. It is important that your BI solution also has features to ensure data quality. This means that your employees should be able to prepare, clean, enhance, or combine the data. Only in this way can you ensure that the subsequent data analysis is accurate.
7. Data connectivity
Most companies collect data from different sources, both internal and external. If you want to use this data for your analysis and decision-making processes, a BI software should allow you to connect the various data sources to provide you with a comprehensive overview of your business data. Standard interfaces enable easy integration of your data sources. However, it is important that your BI software can process and harmonize heterogeneous data formats and structures. This is because data from different systems and sources may be in different formats, but for analysis purposes, they should be presented in a unified format. Therefore, a new BI software should have techniques for data mapping, data cleansing, and data transformation.
8. Security and data privacy
As the importance of data for your business grows, so does the need to protect that data from unauthorized access or data breaches. Therefore, a modern BI software should have comprehensive security measures to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data. This includes access control. It is important that you can finely adjust the access rights to ensure that only authorized users have access to specific data. It should be possible to apply access control at the user level, group level, or even to specific data objects.
In addition, privacy regulations such as GDPR should be taken into account to ensure that personal data is properly protected and handled.
9. Integrated control
However, it is not enough to make data-driven decisions alone. It is important that the decisions made can be implemented correctly immediately. Integrated control within your BI software allows you to implement decisions into actions and assign them to your employees. Within the system you can also link the created tasks to projects, risks, or opportunities, for example, and set priorities. If your BI solution also has collaboration features, you can quickly and easily share all relevant information with your employees or colleagues and monitor the status of tasks at any time.
Conclusion
To meet the growing demands of businesses, an effective BI software requires numerous features. Extensive data visualisation capabilities, access to real-time data, as well as the ability to flexibly use the software are just a few points that help you analyse your data and make informed decisions.
In order for you to implement decisions immediately, Parm AG offers myPARM BIact, a BI software solution that not only covers all the essential features mentioned above but also provides integrated control functions. This allows companies to seamlessly translate their analyses and insights into actions and measures to optimize business performance as well as gain a competitive advantage.
In addition, myPARM BIact provides users with direct recommendations or explanations in full text, derived from technical data analysis. This further enhances the efficiency and quality of evaluations by reducing the interpretation effort for the user when dealing with visualized data.
Learn more about the Business Intelligence Software Software myPARM BIact:
Would you like to get to know myPARM BIact in a demo presentation? Then make an appointment with us right away!