Your organization’s focus has been on acquiring customers, increasing revenues and profitability, and outpacing the competition. And while your organization has continued to improve its operating efficiencies (sometimes by quickly learning from past mistakes), you feel your company should be spending more time analyzing what’s going on and planning for the future—rather than having your employees constantly running around trying to solve operational problems and putting out fires.
Furthermore you need the ability to determine where to concentrate your efforts. You can’t check every detail yet you would like to be able to monitor your operations and focus on quickly finding and resolving potential problems while identifying and leveraging new opportunities. You want to ensure that employee and departmental metrics are aligned with your organization’s strategic goals.
You realize that your organization does not have the resources of a Fortune 500 company, but you believe that—man-for-man and woman-for-woman—your company’s employees are more passionate about their jobs and more committed to its customers. Your company may be relatively small right now, but it’s on a high-growth path. You’ve heard the term “business intelligence” and know that large companies—and maybe even your direct competitors—are using it to obtain a competitive advantage; however, your organization’s primary analysis tool is a spreadsheet.
You were there when your company’s first location was in its founder’s garage. Now that your operations have graduated from the garage to real offices, isn’t it time your company’s analysis capabilities graduated from spreadsheets to more powerful tools as well?
