Top 10 Business Challenges . . . & the Analytics to Address Them:

#10 Challenge:  Limited visibility into Pending & Late Sales Orders
Pain: Late orders get cancelled, Sales Managers can’t see where assistance is required.

Analytics Benefits: 

• instant insight into orders that are overdue, due today, and coming due
• easy identification of ranked selling by salesrep & product
• consolidated view into open orders & AR Aging prevents sales to delinquent clients

#9 Challenge:  Trend Analysis doesn’t show the causes behind the trends
Pain: Digging deeper requires creating multiple reports and time-consuming analysis.

Analytics Benefits: 

• Instant . . . anytime . . . anywhere access to “how you’re doing”
• Supporting details (customer, salesrep, product, region, etc.) just a drill-down click away
• More-informed decisions . . . faster . . . resulting in greater revenues

#8 Challenge:  Lack of awareness into upcoming AP vendor payables
Pain: Early-pay discounts are missed; late charges incurred; unexpected impacts to cash-flow

Analytics Benefits: 

• Cost-savings due to increased visibility into discount & due dates
• Insight into opportunities to negotiate improved payment terms
• Improved cash-flow planning due to better awareness of upcoming obligations

#7 Challenge:  Ad-hoc sales reporting takes forever & requires assistance from IT
Pain: To view sales activity from a different perspective, you have to create a new report

Analytics Benefits: 

• Anyone who runs the report can select their desired fields, values, and other criteria
• Easy time-range comparisons provide instant insight
• One-click drill-down into customer, product, & salesrep specific activities

#6 Challenge:  Gross profit drops below acceptable thresholds and you don’t know it.
Pain: Protracted loss of revenue; continued selling of underperforming (or underpriced) products.

Analytics Benefits: 

• Quicker awareness of swings in profitability
• Instant access to areas (products, salesreps, geographies) underperforming in profitability
• Increased revenues due to quicker turnaround to adjust product pricing to increase profitability

#5 Challenge:  Inadequate visibility into coming due – and overdue — receivables.
Pain: Revenue loss due to uncollectable debt; cut-backs due to cash shortages

Analytics Benefits: 

• Reduced A/R write-offs due to greater visibility into due & past due clients
• Reduction in DSO (days sales outstanding)
• More predictable cash-flow due to improved payment reminders to staff & clients

#4 Challenge:  Knowing Which Customers are Growing . . . and Which Aren’t.
Pain: Staff waste time and money by not focusing on the most profitable clients.

Analytics Benefits: 

• Better ability to focus on most productive clients for steady revenues
• More quickly identify hottest opportunities for revenue growth
• Identify potential new prospects based on growth, not total revenues

#3 Challenge:  No instant access to overall financial standing – e.g., P&L, balance sheet, cash flow.
Pain: Excessive time spent by CEO & CFO take resources away from business planning

Analytics Benefits: 

• Out of the box financials reports – with drill-down – reduces need to create new reports
• Plain English (natural-language) querying eliminates need to wait on tech resources
• More frequent visibility to financials reduces ‘surprises’ in cash flow

#2 Challenge:  Knowing Which Salesreps are Over-Performing . . . and Which Aren’t.
Pain: Sales are lost when high performers are too-busy and under performers not busy enough. 

Analytics Benefits: 

• Close more deals by ‘load-balancing’ opportunities among entire sales team
• More quickly identify struggling salesreps and provide assistance sooner
• More quickly identify causes for poor performance – e.g., rep versus territory, products, etc.

#1 Challenge:  Inability to instantly answer the key question . . . “How are we doing?”

Pains: Making business decisions in the dark.
Guessing at your success.
Costly delays in changing business directions & actions.
Having to reverse course due to non-data-driven decisions.

Analytics Benefits: 

• Instant . . . anytime . . . anywhere access to “how you’re doing”
• Supporting details (customer, salesrep, product, region, etc.) just a drill-down click away
• More-informed decisions . . . faster . . . resulting in greater revenues