Information – there is either too much or too little of it; and often it arrives too late. Each item presents its own problems and challenges that have to be overcome. In today’s business climate, with expanding customer expectations, getting the information that enables you to know what position your business is in and supports your decision making process is a key competitive advantage, as well as a way of ensuring your business is heading in your chosen direction.

As mentioned by a customer of ours“I need to ask it a question; and I need it to answer”; this is the essence of information or “business intelligence”.

• The well crafted information system avoids overloading the user with an excess of data (typically from different sources and in different formats) and prevents loss of time spent in sifting through it to arrive at the insight sought for. It will deliver the information necessary for the support of the decision making process.
• If you have more than one source of data, we can bring them together in a single cohesive environment. Allowing you to leverage the information that is locked in separate systems and get a single ‘joined up’ view of your business.
• You will regain a feel for where the business or section is going and remove doubts about current performance. As and when swift action is needed; then swift, accurate and complete information will be available. Allowing your decisions to be taken with confidence.

A well crafted and deployed information solution will give you targeted information to drive your business. The solutions available will collate, sort and display data in a way that shows you what you need to know; when you need to know it. The information is presented in the right way to at the right level to the right people; so you can focus on the action required and not waste time on the collation of data. A well designed solution will provide:

• Summary information; typically presented graphically (trends, charts, etc) or within tables (such as pivot tables). From here you are able to drill down to understand the detail if required. Avoiding the need to spend time running different reports or logging in and out of different systems.
• Meaningfully presented information providing you with the answers to current questions.
• Source data that is accurate and up to date, even real time, from your different business solutions.
• Quick and easy ways to create new views; as answering one question inevitably leads to further ones being asked. Creating an ongoing demand for information that needs to be speedily accessed and responded to.

If you need to see more information about your business or easily visualise how well your business is performing against targets, then you can either:

• Sift through the fact sheets & links shown; or
• Make life easy can give us a call.

Business Analytics

Reporting Services

Information Sharing

Performance Point

Check out the websites.

Performance Point: www.microsoft.com/bi/products

SQL Server Reporting Services: www.microsoft.com/sql/technologies