Fall football season is in full swing in America! For me, that means a renewed hope of the rise of the Texas A&M Aggies. As I anxiously watch my favorite team play every week, I can’t help but wonder at the amount of preparation that goes into each game. The teams start by evaluating their own players’ strengths and weaknesses, then their opponent’s players and their play calls. Ultimately, they create a game plan that positions the team to win. The team that wins is not always the stronger team, but the better-prepared. Isn’t that just like running a business? To win in business requires a good understanding of what the plan is, how well it was executed, and why it performed well or poorly. With those insights based on data, the business is in the best possible position to compete, win and keep improving.

(Photo source: WrittenLoud)

Winning the game takes a single version of the truth

The proliferation of data everywhere has created serious issues in many organizations. There are too many sources, databases, locations, versions of files. How do you know you’re getting a single version of the truth, or a comprehensive view of the business? You can’t unless you can somehow be sure that you’re including all the sources, controlling the access, and tracking all changes. How much do you rely on people’s past experience and understanding to collect, analyze, and report on the “right” data? This kind of personal bias can produce unintended consequences and hide the real drivers of your business. And lastly, is the analysis going to be timely enough? You need answers in minutes or hours, not days or weeks.

To understand why something happened, say goodbye to the single life

Today you find many standalone business intelligence tools that can help you get insights and create beautiful reports. On the surface, they might appear to all do similar things: they can give you a look into the past of what happened in your data. But can they tell you why? Beyond the insights, can they help monitor the changes in your key findings and alert you in your operations? What if you could find interesting insights on what happened, then use the same data to dig deeper and find out why, without injecting human bias? What if you can then put that insight back into the business operations?

The perfect marriage of business intelligence and data discovery can help you quickly look for insights across all your data sources and surface the hidden patterns and trends for you, while they’re still relevant and timely so you can move to action faster. With the right strategy and tools, you can put those insights in the hands of your entire organization, so you can confidently and quickly take actions and improve your business.

Find out more about this marriage of business intelligence and data discovery here:

Winning with business intelligence and data discovery

The next time you watch your favorite team playing, consider how your business can improve and be better prepared and better run with the help of business intelligence and data discovery tools.