BI Trends for 2021 – 1 of 9

Despite all the change in 2020, data has held, if not strengthened, its position as a critical business asset.

Accessible, accurate and consolidated data is vital for business decision support— especially in times of significant change.

The businesses with good access to up-to-date data arguably coped better with all the disruption. The reason:  managers and CFOs could diagnose their specific situations in detail, giving them the confidence to move fast and innovate to match changing consumer behavior.

The megatrend in the business intelligence market is the application of data analytics to the finance function, resulting in a significant increase in value-adds provided to the broader business.

The power of business intelligence (BI) is enabling finance teams to share critical finance indicators more efficiently. These indicators provide insights into the impact of operational decisions on the bottom line, so decision-makers can quickly troubleshoot or add more value. Finance is doing things that it never could before, thanks to the adoption of digital technologies such as BI and analytics.

Let’s go on a journey as we will explore 9 BI Trends for 2021, from budgeting and forecasting to blending business intelligence with artificial intelligence!  Leveraging Phocas Software will elevate your organization.  Let’s start with Number 1.

Businesses are operating in increasingly dynamic and volatile environments, and the time to adjust and respond has contracted.

To keep pace with rapidly changing market conditions, we are seeing a shift to integrating budgeting and forecasting with BI to inform the company strategy better.

Businesses are adopting software tools to simplify the budgeting process and make it more collaborative, so budgets are more integral to decision-making.

Managers recognize the need for budgets to be highly visible so that all stakeholders can monitor the impacts and outcomes.

Decision-makers also need to re-forecast on-demand or run rolling forecasts.

Finance teams that are preparing budgets in data analytics solutions are benefitting from all the data they can access and the speed with which re-forecasting can take place.

BI software allows the budgets and forecasts to be live — making re-forecasting more straightforward because it’s clear what’s budgeted and what’s achieved for the year-to-date. Many finance teams are also carrying out ‘scenario’ or ‘what-if analysis.’

BI enables them to determine what would a margin look like if they did ‘X,’ so managers can make measured judgements and better predict the next 12 months.

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Written by Phocas Software