Collaborative BI Can Spark Growth and Efficiency in the Post-COVID-19 Era

Even as companies start mulling a WFA future in 2021, the business world will still need to be as buttoned-up as ever— even when working from home in our PJs. With the hope of vaccinations on the horizon, Yellowfin’s GM of Design and Digital, Tony Prysten details why he expects collaborative business intelligence (BI) to be more important than ever.  

I’m going to begin with a humble opinion, but it’s one that reflects a fast-evolving consensus: Work From Home (WFH), as a universal workaday solution, isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Yes, travel time, work/life balance, and availability for the family are important. All are good reasons to work remotely, at least part of the time (along with the benefits of working in PJs when one feels like it). Yet an all-remote work-life exacts a price as well.

Many of us are experiencing a lack of social involvement, along with a waning sense of camaraderie, informal learning, and good old human connection. We are a social species; many of the ingredients for a strong corporate culture depend on face-to-face interaction and shared real-world experiences.

In a post-pandemic world, many businesses are anticipating a future of diverse solutions for office workers. SHRM has pointed to a study by Gartner that identified a massive change in attitudes among corporate executives—82% say they would support at least partial WFH on a permanent basis, while 47% would allow full-time WFH. Research by The Conference Board shows that 36% of companies would hire workers who live anywhere in the U.S., enabling them to work 100% remotely—up from just 12% pre-pandemic.

At the same time, many employees express a desire for shared workplace options, at least occasionally. In our organization, an internal survey revealed that over one-third of our team members are keen to return to the office, while a similar number is happy with WFH. The remainder is on the fence.

It’s evident that working from home worked for everyone when everyone was working from home. But if our next “new normal” reflects some form of hybrid onsite/offsite reality, how will work get done even more efficiently than it does now?

Learn More: How ESM Can Pave the Path to Enhanced Collaboration Experience

Thinking as a Team

In this next reality, Zoom, Slack, Jira, and Outlook won’t be enough. Nor will business apps with collaborative capabilities like Microsoft Excel and Google Docs fully satisfy the need. A hybrid workforce must find new ways to conduct its daily business in a coordinated, seamless, and cooperative manner. Particularly in today’s digital economy, that means information workers must be able to jointly deliberate over their work in real-time, regardless of where they happen to be. If it hasn’t already become clear, business isn’t just about using data; business IS data. 

For many workers, it’s the primary object of their daily labor. Business Intelligence (BI) software is necessary to allow people to see, analyze and act on changes that are happening in their business data. The only way a business can be truly focused on data is if everyone in the organization has access to the insights and actions taken from that data.

But there’s more. To move forward efficiently, teammates must be able to collaborate over that data in situ. This is why collaborative BI will be indispensable in this new hybrid working world.

Collaborative BI allows colleagues to make comments, suggest ideas, draw conclusions and plan next steps, not in a report or email but in the midst of the data workflow itself, in real-time. It is an organic, immersive, easy-to-use, and intuitive solution to business planning.

Collaborative BI also allows users to create and understand the narratives that arise from those conclusions. It facilitates the communications of those narratives throughout the enterprise, up and down the corporate ladder. Ultimately it allows everyone, not just data analysts and planners, to make decisions and take actions based on the organization’s lifeblood—its data—or to see the evidence for the decisions others recommend.

Learn More: Remote-First is Driving a Collaborative Approach to BI

Collaboration in Action

KYOWA, a Japanese cosmetic and health food manufacturer, is a strong example of how collaborative BI works. Using the storytelling features in its collaborative BI platform, along with an automated analytics capability that went live just as the COVID-19 pandemic hit, this healthcare and beauty marketer has been able to reduce its out-of-stock instances to near zero. KYOWA offers many products with lead times that vary by item, anywhere from 30 days to 90 days. The company’s BI platform automates the process of linking inventory data to its accounting software, then automatically detects and notifies users of changes. It takes into account specific trends affecting each SKU, e.g., moving averages and confidence interval of a number of shipments, thus enabling planners to operate with a better understanding of real-world market factors.

Collaboration over this new feature within the BI environment has made KYOWA planning a success, giving the company more efficient and precise inventory management. “By implementing [automated analytics within collaborative BI], it enables us to make stock-out almost zero,” says Hirofumi Mukaida, group leader within KYOWA’s Information Strategy Group. “We are highly expecting that opportunity loss previously caused by stock-out will be close to zero as possible in this fiscal year.”

Whether from home, at the office, on the road, or from some neutral site, effective collaboration is essential to business productivity. New times call for new solutions. In a post-pandemic world, software that allows people to uncover and gain knowledge through shared experiences will be imperative.

Let us know if you liked this article on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window . We would love to hear from you!