The Dangers of Poor Business Intelligence
Business intelligence is supposed to help your organization perform better, achieve results at a lower cost and increase the responsiveness of your staff. However, business intelligence can be useless when you do not track relevant, recent data.
In addition, poor business intelligence will create many more problems than you can imagine, but some of the most dramatic problems include these issues.
1. Poor Business Intelligence Harms Financial Aspects of a Project
The financial aspects of your project include the budget, operating costs, revenue and overall return on investment. However, poor business intelligence leads your organization to believe current processes will be appropriate for your project, and you may not notice problems until the cost to repair such issues goes beyond what the original benefit may have been. In other words, you cannot monitor the budget and return with poor business intelligence.
2. Your Project Could Violate Compliance Measures
Compliance and visibility are critical to ensuring your organization does not violate local, state or federal guidelines. Depending on the industry your project is in, you may have hundreds, if not thousands, of compliance requirements to meet.
Poor business intelligence can lead your organization to believe these measures are being met when they are actually being violated. For example, old information does not take into account how recent tasks and activities impact compliance in poor business intelligence.
3. Your Organization May Face Legal Problems
The problems with compliance also involve potential legal problems, which may include incarceration and the assessment of fines or penalties against your organization. In cases where poor business intelligence led to the dismissal or termination of an employee, your organization could be faced with court costs, wrongful termination fees and lost wages if a lawsuit is brought by a former employee.
4. Productivity Is Decreased
Poor business intelligence tools do not help employees understand how their current work is being viewed. As a result, employees, members of the project management team and upper-level management may not be willing to learn how to enhance their performance. This directly impacts the productivity of your operation, causing additional delays and costs.
5. Collaboration Suffers, and Employee Satisfaction Drops
Similarly, the collaboration between those in a project becomes nonexistent when poor business intelligence tools result in confusion and disconnect between team members.
Furthermore, this disconnect will cause employees to feel dissatisfied in their positions, and it can result in poor satisfaction among consumers when a project is completed.
6. Risk Management Becomes Ineffective
Risk management includes the analysis of opportunities and threats, and poor business intelligence basically flips the definitions of these terms. In other words, poor business intelligence may cause a threat to appear as an opportunity and vice versa. As a result, you cannot create an effective risk management strategy when appropriate data and information are unavailable.
Making the decision to use business intelligence tools is one of the best ways to enhance the overall productivity and capabilities of your organization. Business intelligence needs to benefit your organization, but poor business intelligence can completely decimate your operation.
By understanding how poor business intelligence impacts your project, you can see why you need to carefully review the available features of all business intelligence tools you may be considering.
Key Takeaway
- Poor business intelligence leads to problems with cash flow, problems adhering to the budget and other financial problems.
- Compliance initiatives are more difficult to follow with poor business intelligence.
- Legal consequences may arise from decisions based on inaccurate data.
- Your team becomes less productive and fails to work together as needed.
- The satisfaction of your employees decreases, which may result in resignations or terminations.
- Risk management strategies fail.