Data Intelligence for Financial Departments

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Data Intelligence for Financial Departments

If you want to know how a business is doing, look at its financials.

Is a company financially responsible? Is it growing and worth investing in? Layering BI tools over your financial software helps answer these questions and draw deep insights from your financial data.

finance dog

If you are in a financial role, here are a few Key Performance Indicators you might want to consider tracking:

Progression Towards Long-Term Goals This is the ultimate answer to “what is business intelligence and what does it do?” BI will paint a picture of progress for you (either good or bad) and allow you to see if you are on track to knock down your 1 year, 3 year, 5+ year goals. You will see if you are moving in the right direction with your profit, revenue, production, expansion, and other BHAGs.

Expense Reporting BI reporting done right will be your single source of truth to aggregate expense data. This will help you identify the biggest expense groups, expense trends (face mask expense are spiraling out of control!) and also identify discrepancies and their source.

Revenue Versus Forecast This KPI is a very important metric. You budgeted based on a forecast of revenue, so are you hitting that goal and are you trending in the right direction to do so? If you are missing goals, is there a reason hidden in your data – perhaps you always miss your goal in August because nobody is buying what you are selling in back-to-school season. Either adjust your expectations or offer something the market wants at that time.

Profit Margin Is the business itself as profitable as it should be? What are the most profitable products, services, and customers? What effects did a seasonal discount have to net profit? Setting up your BI tools correctly will help you quickly see which factors are affecting your bottom line both positively and negatively, giving you the information you need to analyze your business and lead in a more profitable direction.

If you need help collecting, cleaning, and visualizing your data, reach out to us to get started on your data project.

Originally published on 2021-02-19 by Royce Hall

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