Dashboards Don’t Lie: 6 Reasons Why You Should be Running Your Business from a Dashboard

The latest technology trends can make tremendous differences for businesses of all sizes. The combination of cloud, data, social and mobile – what Gartner calls the “Nexus of Forces” – gives small businesses the chance to invest in powerful technology that can be implemented quickly at a fraction of the cost of previous software.

Small and mid-size companies alike become enviably agile and competitive when they utilize technology to replace outdated business practices and procedures. If used strategically, technology can build a customer experience and business agility for small companies that is difficult for larger companies to replicate.

Utilizing technology to view Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), charts, and real-time analytics from all aspects of your business in on location provides for deep analysis and the ability to spot trends or issues before they become real problems.

With today’s technology, running your business without a dashboard would be like driving your car without a speedometer.   Utilizing modern dashboards to run your business gives you the ability to not only see what is happening in real-time, but enhances your organization with the following six benefits:

1. Improves employee performance by monitoring goals and achievements

Stop spending time on hunting for spreadsheets and reading outdated reports that take time to run and may contain errors. Instead, get a comprehensive dashboard view of all business activity.  With a modern platform such as NetSuite you have all the data in one place, including orders, inventory, billing, revenue, income, sales history, website traffic and more. Drill down to all underlying numbers, transactions, trends and other details across all departments for numerous metrics that will help with KPI’s, forecasting, strategic planning and more.

  2.  Allows for managing by exception

Find and solve problems by surfacing them before they occur without being a micro-manager.  Views of sales team performance help determine which products are selling and what reps have the highest profit margins.  Other customized views such as customers with overdue balances and customer activity history such as emails and phone calls can help solve many minor problems quickly before they become major issues.

3. Saves time and money by surfacing the right data

Quickly find what you need! Provide easy access to customer information and accounting data — A/R, A/P, payroll, income, cash flow and other specific dashboards dedicated to each business function.

4. Removes human error

Save time and money by quickly finding costly mistakes and surfacing them on your dashboard. With a modern dashboard solution, manual processes are improved.  Excel spreadsheets become extinct, communication is streamlined, accountability is enforced, cost and manual errors are minimized, and an approval hierarchy is established.  Your company workflow procedures will be adhered to, but the platform can change and adapt to your speed of business.

5. Focus on priorities that matter

It is difficult to find out what’s really happening across the business in real-time when relying on spreadsheets and emails.  With a modern dashboard solution, employees can easily see the tasks that need to be completed quickly.  A Warehouse Manager’s dashboard can display how many orders need to be received and fulfilled, while a Controller’s dashboard can show purchase orders awaiting approval, overdue invoices, upcoming bills to pay and more.  A Sales Manager’s dashboard can display how many opportunities are waiting to be closed in addition to many other tasks.  Every role in the organization has customizable views of what is important to them.

6. Single source of the truth

A modern business platform like Netsuite integrates all the various operations of your organization and prepares  you for the future. The “hairball effect” which is a tangled web of several different systems can be eliminated and all aspects of the business can be managed from one system and can be operated from any device; PC, tablet, mobile phone or laptop. With a single management system for your business, you can access analytics, CRM records, financials, customer data, product inventory and more with ease.

With a modern platform, you not only get an accurate view of your business, you get agility, while enhancing customer experience which is critical for the success of your business.  To take your company to the next level, consider an integrated digital platform for comprehensive, real-time insight that will help your business succeed.

To learn more about how NetSuite can help you streamline your business processes, provide real-time analytics and insights to your organization and improve your profitability please contact us at info@meridianbusiness.com or 913-481-7309.