Stop the End of the Month Hustle; 3 Signs You Need to Automate Operational Reporting

The end of the month is just days away, and that means it’s time for the end of the month hustle. Your team is digging for data, scrambling for metrics and pulling late nights to get end of the month reports published on time. Sound familiar? You’re not alone.

Leaders from every industry tell us the same thing: “we’re always feeling the pressure of end of the month reports.” The good news is, you can do something about it. Here are three signs your organization is doing the end of the month hustle, and how a business intelligence solution can help.

Sign #1: Team Members Are Pulled Off Of Core Tasks

Many organizations have to pull team members off of core tasks for days at a time to pull and publish reports. As a result, workflow is disrupted and productivity takes a major hit.

Typically, we see this play-out when an organization isn’t using business intelligence software, or they’re using the wrong business intelligence tool. The designated “report person” must gather data from several people and various sources and then manually combine it, or, they use BI to do the dirty work, but because the solution isn’t the best fit for their use case, they have to spend hours re-working data and reports. Either way, the process is tedious and time wasting.

Solution: The Right BI Tool

Often, businesses create reports the “old school” way month after month because they think BI is too expensive. But that’s not true. Sure, there are plenty of pricey business intelligence solutions on the market (such as SAP Business Objects, Oracle, or IBM), but there are also a number of innovative, affordable BI tools that are priced right for small to mid-sized businesses. For example, Yurbi starts at just $250 per month for 5 users.

Click here to download “5 Mistakes Executives Make When Buying BI”

We also come across businesses that have gotten on board with BI, but because the solution isn’t the right fit for their use case, they wind up doing the end of the month hustle anyway. At 5000fish, our Customer Success team is dedicated to finding you the right solution for your needs, and that starts with identifying your use case. Whether you consider Yurbi or another tool, having a clear idea of what you want to accomplish by using BI is critical to choosing the best BI tool.

Sign #2: You’re Constantly Nagging IT

If you’re using a traditional BI tool verses an agile BI product, you’re probably nagging IT as the end of the month approaches. That’s because traditional business intelligence tools like Crystal Reports and SAP Business Objects can only be leveraged by experienced developers. Because you can’t create the reports you need, you’re constantly trying to communicate what you want with IT- but often you end up with a report that wasn’t exactly (or even anything) like you were looking for. Hence, you and IT find yourselves on the dance floor doing the end of the month hustle.

Solution: Agile BI

Leveraging an agile business intelligence solution like Yurbi, Sisense, or Tableau breaks you free from your dependence on IT. Unlike traditional BI tools which are created for developers to use, Agile BI tools like Yurbi are designed with the business user in mind, so nearly anyone in your organization can learn how to pull data and built the exact report they want. –That means you’ll no longer be in a “back and forth” with IT, and IT will have more time to focus on important business development tasks. Can you say “win-win?”

Sign #3: Leaders and Stakeholders Complain Data is Stale

Have you experienced this scenario? Your CEO wants to know what happened over the last few weeks, but the most recent data you can get your hands on is more than a month old.

Business leaders often tell us they’re making decision about the future of their organization based on stale data- and that’s not good enough in today’s fast-paced market. To make the best decisions they can, leaders need real-time data. But because you’re manually pulling and compiling data, using the wrong BI to do it for you, or struggling with IT, getting real-time data is impossible. In an effort to get the “most recent” data available, you wait until the last few days of the month to start compiling reports, and soon you’re doing the end of month hustle.

Solution: Real-time Data

The right business intelligence tool can get you the real-time data your leaders and stakeholders need. Several agile solutions, including Klipfolio, Yurbi and YellowFin allow business users to access real-time data.

Yurbi’s mobile-first strategy also allows the business user to pull real-time reports and look at the most up to date dashboards right from their mobile device. Yurbi is a 100% HTML5 application, so when you and the CEO are chatting over lunch, simply open up any browser on your smartphone or tablet, connect to your organization’s Yurbi server, and in seconds you have real-time data in the palm of your hand.

Adopting any new technology requires a commitment of time and money, but when it comes to business intelligence the ROI can be huge. In fact, a solution like Yurbi can pay for itself just in the time that it gives back to your team members, not to mention the long-term cost savings you’ll see with improved efficiency and accuracy.

If any of the signs we outlined above hit home, your organization might benefit from a business intelligence solution. To learn more about how a BI tool can help your organization, we suggest reading our free eBook “The Hidden Cost of Bad Business Intelligence.” If you’re ready to take the next step, the Yurbi Pricing Guide will provide you with everything you need to know to help calculate your BI costs and develop your usage strategy.

Click here to download “5 Mistakes Executives Make When Buying BI”