Online entities track more and more data every day. However, we’ve found that many organizations struggle to find ways to use the information they already track to their strategic advantage even after collecting it. Our business intelligence services are designed to organize historic and current data in meaningful ways as you look to accurately predict future consumer trends.
Switchbox works with executives, managers and auditors to determine how information can help them achieve their goals. What do you need to track? What information is just noise?
We start with a simple dashboard customized to each user. We then provide search tools based on needs and ultimately move to proactive dashboards which help alert users to potential problems before they develop. At the end of the day, our clients win over their competitors because they manage problems weeks before their competitors would even know issues were present.
What is the true value of a business intelligence project? Answering this is as simple as asking you “what are your biggest pain points” and then using our expertise to determine if a BI project can solve them.
A recent Switchbox client needed to know the average allocation of dental staff across their hospitals. We asked what the value was and their answer was “If the ratio of staff vs. patients is higher than .2, we will save $10 million from a lawsuit.” In that case, the value of the BI project was easily defined.
Value isn’t always that easily defined. For example, real-time data may be leveraged primarily to help you get a better grip on inventory control. But you can use these numbers to track consumer buying habits, plan for the future and increase your ROI by stocking preferred products vs. the stuff that just sits on the shelf. Before you jump into a business intelligence project, we will help you determine the value of the information.
The goal of business intelligence and data tracking is not to search for individual transactions but to make sense of trends in the information. This often occurs when you are trying to predict the need for future resources or to look into the past to find issues you didn’t see at the time. In this case, the primary focus is on collecting as much information as possible, organizing it and then trying to provide data visualization so humans can easily make sense of the information.
One of our national clients was able to publish an online survey that was filled out by thousands of the nation’s leading business minds. As the information came in, it was de-identified in real-time to protect the individual businesses and then trends about the strength of the business community as a whole were published. The project was so successful it was ultimately funded by GE Capital as an annual publication.
There’s a lot of confusion around the term “Big Data.” However, the simplest use of it just means publishing huge amounts of information so many people can search it. We have helped many government agencies and political organizations create big data web portals and searchable databases.
We begin by taking huge amounts of data that are often poorly formatted and difficult to access – and often needs to be pulled from multiple sources. Once the data is collected and organized, we then determine how users will need to search that information. Depending on the type of data, we often build out ways to search by location. For instance, if we have tax information by county, we may allow the user to enter their zip code into the online web portal to find tax information for the county that matches the zip code. The goal is to publish vast amounts of information to as many people as possible.
We were able to help one client publish 4.5 billion individual pieces of data in an interactive online format. Within days of the public data portal going live, news reporters were already asking questions about key pieces of data they had found.
Instead of wasting space on a server in some basement or up in the cloud somewhere, get in touch with the business intelligence experts at Switchbox. We will work directly with you to determine what information can be collected to alleviate which daily headaches you’re tired of dealing with.
Make better predictions. Make better moves. Make more money.