A recent article in Industry Week on making the move to SaaS listed 7 ways that SaaS BI can help manufacturers. I found the article amusing because these key insights hold true whether or not you deploy your BI on SaaS.
So, here are seven ways BI can help you:
- identification of demand trends
- analysis of supplier costs and delivery histories
- identification of customer buying patterns
- channel team empowerment via full visibility into sales history
- increased profitability through better cost controls and inventory levels
- improved customer satisfaction through better service levels
- continuous operational improvement
And, even better, you can do all this with a good “spend analysis” tool that was designed for more general “data analysis”. So go do it.