Business Intelligence for the Finance Industry

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The banking and finance industry is experiencing continuous changes brought about by advances in technology. The changes are welcome – however not without the accompanying challenges.

As a result, the kind of market we now have is dynamic and Wall Street is making the necessary adjustments, not to dampen vibrancy in the market, but to improve strategies in line with the changing technology. That requires developing new tools and implementing them correctly.

Business Intelligence (BI) Tools for Financial Institutions

There are a lot of tools that have been developed and ones that are worth discussing about are business intelligence tools that help managers identify better management practices and make smarter business decisions. A finance management dashboard is one of these tools.

Here’s a quick look on how this kind of instruments can help in those areas and in other areas such as profitability, reduction of risks and creating competitive advantage.

  • Operational Efficiencies

Improving efficiency is a key to winning in the competition. BI tools can analyze how efficient are the operational processes leading to maximization of resources and expertise and to reduction of operational cost.

How good are you at customer experience? A dashboard can help you improve this at the point where your employees and customers come face to face.

  • Products and Services

BI tools do not only allow managers to track which products and services are performing well but also give them insights on the needs and experience of their customers.

  • Marketing

Do you want to know the best market segment to target? A simple dashboard is all you need to have a good picture of it. The tool can also show you which customer profile gives you the highest revenue and the one that should be put lowest in the list of priorities.

  • Customer Retention

There are customers who are loyal to you. You need to know the reasons why they are staying with your business, but you also need to identify why others are leaving.

Business analytic tools can help you determine the reasons why and lead you to taking steps to improve your retention rates.

  • Risk Reduction

This is an ever-changing world where nothing is 100% certain. How would you keep track of your customers and internal organizations so that you can early detect possibilities of fraud?

You can use BI tools for this. There are also lots of benefits from knowing your clients’ financial capacities, which a dashboard can provide you 24/7.

  • Investment

At some points, managers run out of invest ideas and strategies. The good thing about BI tools is that they can bring in “new” results from real-time data.

New results mean new things that can be explored further for better decision making and development of new approaches to investing. That’s the kind of data and analysis only a dashboard can bring to your organization.

As an example, the number of cars on a shopping mall’s parking lot can be useful in triangulating consumer research. Recently, images from satellites are used to gather data of the global supply of fuel.

These and more examples clearly show how indispensable BI tools can be in the conduct of modern business.

KPIs You Must Have

Towards a development of a dashboard for your organization, it is important that you identify the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that matter to your business. Here are some of the KPIs worth considering for the financial sector:

  • Working capital – The financial health of your business must be regularly assessed.
  • Current ratio – Are you able to meet your financial obligations on time? Data on this are crucial for your growth and expansion.
  • Payroll headcount ratio – How many employees are in the payroll section? Do you have measures to help you fully utilize workforce?
  • Return on equity – You want to know the income you are generating now to ensure you improve your company’s value over time.
  • Budget line items – Data from this can give you the total list of line items for your budget and show you the depth and complexity of this and the items it contains.

This is not a complete listing. However, as you go through your needs and the challenges your company is facing, you will have a better look at what additional items should be included. The success of a use of a dashboard is largely determined by the identification of the right KPIs to include.

 

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