Data can give you a competitive advantage: expense management

We know that analyzing expenses is vital to an organization and is surely being done by the CFO or individual responsible for this business task. But what’s important here is how it is being analyzed, what’s being analyzed and how much time is the analysis taking.

We had a great meeting with a company last week who is currently manually creating reports, struggling with communication around the data, not having the ability to investigate into business lines and geography. As the business continues to grow, there is more data becoming available and they realize the data at hand is what can give them their competitive advantage. Each manager has been spending hours each week creating reports for their departments which is taking valuable time away from other aspects of their job.

This company is after an easy-to-read dashboard that makes their data speak for all business users. They feel that the company should have the business’s vital signs at their fingertips rather than just the CFO. It’s time that all managers sleep better, by having the ability to watch performance, production and quality numbers at their fingertips; whether this is off site or on the floor.

Businesses, especially manufacturing, right now are under increased demand and pressure to improve efficiencies and profitability. The company we met with last week sees the Qlik Sense solution as a huge opportunity for them to be able to consolidate all of their data, analyze sales trends, identify gaps and enable executives, managers and front-line staff through data visibility.

What we keep hearing from our manufacturing clients is that they are now taking the applications built in Qlik Sense and making them available on the floors whether it is made visible through televisions that are updated every hour or iPads that can be easily transported around the floor and utilized as visuals during department meetings. This is allowing departments to make smarter, faster business decisions that is ultimately saving them time and money in their products and services.

A great example; a company shared with us that a huge challenge they were experiencing was trucks showing up to pick up product and leaving without that scheduled product. Why? Because the business line was not running efficiently and waste was increasing. With real-time intelligence, this company was able to monitor, make quick decisions and adjust the business line so that product was ready to be shipped in time and keeping customers satisfied and keeping their business.

So now executives can dive deeper into the business, in an instant and secure manner; managers can deliver top of the line products, streamline efficiencies, identify risks and manage costs; and frontline employees have visibility into the department and the accountability has now shifted from executives to company wide.