A new era of information sharing
In a world where information is immediately and simply accessible, whether on Google, through social media or on an app or mobile tool, businesses are increasingly focussed on bringing the same speed and convenience into the workplace.
Businesses need to have the ability to react quickly and efficiently to problems, bringing together information from a variety of sources and analysing it intelligently, then sharing it with others to make an informed decision. The Microsoft Business Intelligence (BI) package enables organisations to derive in-depth insight from data and collaborate with colleagues efficiently.
We've recently been working with a client on a BI project and working with the Microsoft BI suite, with the aim of enabling far greater richness of reports to give the business increased speed of access to detailed, specific metrics. The project got me thinking about whether businesses are fully aware of programmes such as this and of the unique benefits they can provide an organisation if integrated properly.
What is Microsoft Business Intelligence and why use it?
Microsoft BI gives an organisation insight into how it’s IT systems and information is being accessed and used across the business, which data is being sourced, where its being sourced from, how this data is being used to create content and subsequently how it's being shared across the organisation.
The current Microsoft BI suite allows you to author a number of reports, publish them and then share these with people you think they'll be most relevant to in your business. People within the business can also follow you as a specific type of report advocate, effectively building a new type of business focussed "social network" into your internal infrastructure.
As with so many of these new products, in order to use them to the best of their ability and to see true return on investment, it’s essential to draw on outside experience to customise the system so that it perfectly complements your business needs - which is where we come in.
Used effectively, a number of the products in the Microsoft BI suite allow you to:
- Quickly and simply search and retrieve common knowledge documents
- Share your searches with colleagues
- Efficiently add new documents for colleagues to access
- See which documents have been submitted or shared from specific departments or colleagues
- Customise your own tools to determine which documents are for public view or not and where it'll be displayed on your profile
The end result is a highly effective and very efficient information finding and sharing infrastructure which can ultimately improve internal communication, save valuable time and increase productivity.