Drive the road to success with data analytics

We live in the information age. Our access to data is now virtually limitless, but raw statistics are rarely of use. The key to success is making sense of that information; turning facts and figures into useful signposts that can guide you to better business results.

How often have you relied on your intuition to make important business decisions? Have you ever felt nervous and unsure about the decision and wondered how your company will benefit? Now imagine using clear, actionable data to make intelligent decisions and enhance your company’s operations for today and tomorrow with a click of a button - this is possible with analytics. By using analytics, you can sort through data and pull out the important details to inform intelligent business decisions.

Over time a business can collect a large amount of data - sifting through this manually can be time intensive and cause headaches when trying to find specific information. This doesn’t have to be the case. With a business intelligence solution incorporating analytics, sifting through your data can actually save time and money by finding the information you need from multiple data sources within the company. This analysed data can deliver actionable strategic insights and the ability to ensure the company is operating efficiently, productively and safely.

The right business intelligence solution will enable you to publish data in real-time reports, customisable to suit your organisation’s policies and targets. For example, one company which implemented a business intelligence solution used it to analyse its fuel consumption, fuel spend, idling and utilisation of its vehicle fleet, and made improvements. Using the data it was also able to improve set key performance indicators (KPIs) and gain insight into the results of policy implementations.

With real-time interactive access to information you will be able to build KPIs that will assist in improving your company over time. If a fleet manager was able to monitor a fleet’s idle time for example, they would gain key insights that inform ways to minimise the unnecessary idling and fuel costs. By reviewing the size of the fleet, the fleet manager can analyse and pinpoint which vehicles are not being used effectively and look at ways to improve this. If four vehicles are travelling the same journey every day they can look to minimise the activity down to one or two vehicles.

By using data analytics you can also gain insights and the ability to compare an individual’s performance from one week to the next. These insights will help monitor behaviours and trends within your company, and the opportunity to fine-tune operations to ensure individuals are meeting their targets. With the help of data and analytics, the company in the example above implemented a KPI to measure time in over-speed as a percentage of each journey. It saw a 79% reduction in over-speeding in just a few months. Data can also be used to develop performance management schemes with specific scoring systems, allowing you to determine a system to reward individuals that meet their targets. 

The insights accessible with business intelligence can also assist in managing safety across your fleet. If your company policy is for drivers to travel a certain number of standard hours in a week, you can easily access this information and, based on findings, implement methods to manage this process and avoid fatigue. The information can also be used to gain insights into other safety rules specific to your company.

By applying analytics to data with a business intelligence solution, you will gain a competitive advantage by making more informed decisions for your company. Not only will the data collected assist with managing performance, it will also assist in gaining predictive intelligence to make important decisions that impact the bottom line and the future of the company