Business intelligence (BI) has become important in anticipating customer needs and wants, designing the product and process for the same, and deliver to specifications profitably. A manufacturing company must know which product is doing well in the market, which product is in demand, forecast demand based on past needs, purchase and stock the raw materials, store the finished goods in inventory, keep track of the sales, track payables and receivables, measure profit/loss and do more. If you are looking for a solution to get quick and valuable insights into the aspects mentioned above, BI with its features like visualization, reporting, data discovery, scorecards, and dashboards can be your best investment.
Here are ways in which Business Intelligence can benefit the manufacturing industry:
Informed decision-making
Manufacturing industries today are processing copious amounts of data from multiple sources, and hence arises the need for the right processing and utilization of data. BI is a powerful tool in the hands of businesses who would want to extract and convert data from multiple disparate sources to gain meaningful insights. Data visualization tools can be used to get insights that can be presented in a simplified manner, along with key business matrices and KPIs. Insights help the decision-makers to make more informed business decisions.
Improves operational efficiency
Manufacturing units can use easy-to-navigate dashboards, comprehensive reports, and scorecards to improve efficiency. With the help of business insights, industry units can improve operational efficiency, reduce waste, enhance the quality of the product, reduce labor, material and overhead costs, negotiate effectively with suppliers, and present winning quotes to the customers.
Financial management
BI tools can be used for sales analysis, profit and loss analysis, raw material analysis, which can help in optimizing resources and increasing ROI. BI can be used in identifying unexplored channels of revenue and minimizing internal costs leading to increase in profit margins and reduction in unnecessary expenses. BI also helps in carrying out an in-depth cost-benefit analysis, demand-supply analysis, and helps to streamline operational procedures by monitoring and managing processes.
Supply chain and logistics management
By evaluating performance on a regular basis, BI can help in the management of supply chain logistics and analysis of data to ensure quality and timely deliveries, monitor freight costs by identifying fluctuation in supply and demand and optimize the value of suppliers by giving feedback on their services. Thus, BI can help in shipment performance evaluation and contract negation.
Inventory control
One of the most crucial aspects of a manufacturing firm is inventory control and management. BI can help in tracking and reducing the inventory costs, avoid the risk of out-of-stock situations by analyzing safety stock data, create accurate forecasts using sales information, and over-stock conditions can be predicted well in advance.
Conclusion
A good amalgam of manufacturing and technology by utilizing data is changing the way businesses used to work. Business Intelligence is used for visualizing and analyzing data to meet the data consumption needs of the business. If you want to gain deeper insights with data analytics to meet your information needs and make better decisions with BI solutions, you can get in touch with our BI experts.
