While the 'Monthly Report' still has obvious value, we live in an era where real-time information is the norm. With real-time data sources, you can stay apprised of movements in your business on a minute-by-minute basis.
View overall operational health, at-a-glance
Capture hourly and daily trends, which can highlight time-related bottlenecks
Receive early-warning signals, and be alerted if a predetermined threshold is breached
Feed-through information for stock, component or quota replenishment forecasts
Real-time financial impact measurement & modelling
Core metrics can tell you a lot, and are always the best place to start.
Apart from the benefit of greater visibility and control over operations, reporting of key metrics can, for example, prevent a systemic deterioration of productivity by highlighting underperforming stages earlier, in any business process: whether financial services, manufacturing, healthcare... and so on.
When you start to gather historical metrics, it creates exciting opportunities.
For example, if you run an online service that has an excellent reputation but insufficient scaling capability for peak demand, the opportunity cost (investment and operational) of remediation versus the cost of losing that business can be more easily assessed.
Reports, both real-time and historical, will equip your business to perform at its best.
What business intelligence opportunities could you leverage?