3 ways mobile business intelligence impacts decision-making

Mobile Business Intelligence (Mobile BI) refers to the use of mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, to access and interact with business data and dashboards on the go. Mobile BI allows users to retrieve and analyze key business metrics, reports and visualizations in real-time, empowering them to make data-driven decisions from virtually anywhere. 

In today’s business world, sales and operations teams are working in an environment that is more fast-paced and more fluid than ever before. As a result, your prospective and existing customers expect everything to work in real time and for the sales team to have up-to-date information. Here are three ways that mobile business intelligence will give your team an edge when they're on the road.

1. Mobile BI accelerates the decision-making process

In organisations making use of mobile business intelligence, users make decisions faster than in organisations that are not using it.

In fact, on average, managers in organisations using mobile BI are able to make decisions in almost a third of the time that it takes managers who don't use mobile BI.

This is because mobile analytics implementations place information at the fingertips of front-line personnel at any time, and any place. When this access to critical information is reliable and easy to access, employees can make informed decisions when they need to, wherever they are.

Otherwise, they will have lost time spent between meetings and appointments (or even during), as they are restricted by traditional reporting. For example, when a question is raised in a meeting, they will have to say that they will get back to them later instead of logging in and finding out right then and there.

Static reporting is more of a hindrance in situations where decisions are collaborative in nature or involve a chain of command. In this case, the problem of information and decision latency is further compounded slowing down the entire decision-making process.

2. Users of mobile business intelligence expect a quick response

Users of mobile business intelligence are used to faster response times to information requests and are more demanding in their information needs. Time-critical decisions need to be made, so mobile BI users need 'always on' access.

In fact, mobile BI users tend to need information within minutes of business transactions being recorded.

Business managers' decision windows - the time frames they have to respond after business events occur - are shrinking and because organisations need information fast, there's a pressure for managers to react faster, with mobile BI paving the way for decision makers to resolve issues more efficiently.

3. Mobile business intelligence increases customer satisfaction

Organisations employing mobile BI are able to improve customer satisfaction at almost twice the rate of those organisations that did not use mobile BI.

This is why mobile BI adoption is strongest among

• Senior executives who are using mobile business intelligence to make operational, financial and strategic decisions.
• Field-based people in branches and sales representatives are using mobile BI to answer customers' questions, provide clear advice and win new business.

Mobile business intelligence improves customer satisfaction because answers can be immediately provided - for example, on open shipments and future product availability - which in turn leads to business opportunities. Otherwise, the question is left unanswered until later on, and it may be too late by then.

Who's Using Mobile BI?

The appeal of mobile Business intelligence for executives, line managers and operations managers is access; that is, they want to be able to instantly self-serve instead of waiting days or even weeks for a custom algorithm to be written for a report to be produced.

Mobile BI lets managers look at up-to-date data and then make decisions quickly - such as allocating personnel and other resources to different workloads. This is especially useful for task-based mobile workforces, such as field service, sales, and distribution.

What are the barriers to mobile BI adoption?

Common barriers exist to rolling out mobile BI apps across a company:

• Cost. Organisations think that they have to buy everyone a new tablet, when in fact they can use the devices already in place.
• Security. Organisations fear that their data will walk away or be stolen. However, there are ways to deal with it. Loss control programs can be put in place, using mobile device management technologies, or even enforcing a policy such as not allowing applications or data to be downloaded onto the device.
• Infrastructure. Organisations think that it will take plenty of planning to design an infrastructure, and that implementing it will be costly. However, in the long run, the benefits far outweigh the costs.

It's unnecessary for organisations' IT departments to design their own mobile applications, because most BI vendors will have a mobile offering. To those who are considering mobile BI adoption, it's worthwhspeaking to your existing vendor and see if what they have matches your needs.

Make sure that the app is very responsive because you need immediacy - it should be focused on only providing you with the information needed instead of complete dashboards.

Mobile BI gives organisations a competitive advantage

There has been a shrinking decision window amongst managers for several years which has been accelerated by the pandemic, so it's clear that mobile BI can put organisations ahead of their competitors.

Mobile BI allows executives and field workers to make data-backed decisions faster because near instant access to information is necessary to support well-informed decision-making.

To learn more about mobile business intelligence and sales enablement download this checklist of ways to boost revenue with data.