Visual Analytics
Your data is too important to be disregarded.
We offer a range of effective solutions for business decision-making, based on state-of-the-art visualization and latest business intelligence (BI) technology. We are implementing management reporting systems, analytic dashboards, flexible visual analytics tools and planning systems.
In business, intuition is important.
But it is not enough.
Today, more data on business environment is available than ever. Winning are the companies which are able to efficiently use analytics in order to understand complex market situation and use the acquired knowledge for business growth.
The disciplines of business analysis, information design and business intelligence are developing rapidly. Visual analytics and dashboards are gaining crucial importance. At iStudio, we have been working with them for many years. We research, develop and implement solutions from the best practices worldwide.
Our solutions:
- Sales and Marketing Analyses
- Dashboards
- Analytical CRM
- Controlling and Business Analyses
- Planning Systems
- Profitability Analyses
- Other solutions
Good insight into the business environment and the performance of the sales process is a prerequisite for effective planning measures to improve sales. Modern enterprise needs to learn from the effects of their own performance and react quickly to signals from the environment. Therefore it requires analysis of the causes of deviations from the plan, detailed market analysis, analysis of the effectiveness of sales of new products, sales promotions in the field and much more. In iStudio we have developed a range of solutions that contain complex calculations, but are extremely simple and intuitive for end users.
Dashboards are the most efficient form of communicating business information, since they include all information in one place and allow for customization of an interactive insight for each individual user. Modern technology offers an opportunity to build efficient dashboards, accessed by the users simply through their web browsers.
The sales process begins with the customer. Analytical CRM is intended for an up-to-date and complete customer overview and control over the entire sales process ranging from the first contact, offers, orders, invoices and finally, to payments. Our solutions include well thought-out indicators of the success of this process at every stage, such as the efficiency of sales-boosting strategies, the profitability of offers, etc.
Controlling and business analyses are fields where an impressively wide array of methods are applied. A present-day controller and business analyst is expected to be some kind of a »superman«, who needs to know all business processes of a company in detail, understand leadership processes and cooperate proactively with company management. All this would be impossible without efficient analytical solutions. iStudio is a member of the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA), we are also familiar with the programmes of the German Controller Academie. Solutions for controlling (cost controlling, sales controlling, project controlling, profitability analysis, planning systems) are our core business.
Preparing a business plan is a recurring process, which is not only very time consuming, but also needs to lead to a sensible, quality result that will integrate the strategic goals and serve as a reliable guideline at monitoring sales and other processes in the future. Business users – planners – need a solid baseline to prepare a plan they are responsible for. Planning systems will make the process of business planning a lot shorter, as the systems automatically prepare the base data. The end users will receive prepared planning tables in the familiar environment of MS Excel, with in-built visual analytics which will help them check the effects of the planned values as they work.
Profitability Analysis
Profitability analyses represent advanced projects, requiring good knowledge of business processes, data handling, statement control, calculations and cost allocations. In addition to that, a certain extent of common sense is required, as the profitability analyses need to clearly set the goals of how the business decisions of strategic importance will be implemented. The OLAP systems are an ideal tool for such projects, especially when they integrate good practice of some of the most successful European companies.
We are implementing solutions for stock analysis, strategic purchase management, budget analysis, cash flow management, personnel management (Analytical HRM), press statement analysis (Clipping), customer satisfaction analysis, Mystery Shopping, simulation building, several solutions with Data Mining techniques and more.
In practice, all our solutions have been under the scrutiny of demanding customers. We differ from others in the fact that we carefully consider the needs of our end users (managers, controllers, business analysts). We pay a lot of attention to visualization, making our solutions legible, intuitive and user friendly.
Besides from implementing our solutions, we also train our users with an appropriate pedagogical approach. We do not only install the tools, we also ensure that the company employees can use them efficiently and acquire the necessary competencies for efficient analytics and reporting.
IT projects are infamous, especially the BI projects.
Every time I read an analysis on a BI project implementation, the results are similar: the rate of successfully completed project is abysmally low, despite the positive influence of project management methods in the last decade. The reasons are many, but the main one is still the chasm between the worlds of IT and management. Therefore, at iStudio:
- we do not write overwhelming documentations,
- we do not bother our users with unnecessary questions and
- we do not execute »big bang« projects.
- our customers receive relevant examples of the best practice,
- the end users receive a detailed prototype within 14 workdays,
- we deliver the first results promptly and in so doing establish a positive contact with our key users.
We work in a different manner. We use agile methods to develop BI solutions.
We understand well business needs, which makes us successful at building bridges across the gap between business users and IT. We always start with users, their goals and their needs. With a wide array of previously prepared solutions and the Rapid Prototyping methodology we ensure that:
How do our systems work?
We seamlessly integrate our solutions to your existing IT infrastructure.
We can adapt our solutions to an IT infrastructure in your company to a large extent. In this way, we save you considerable software investments and save final users a lot of stress, allowing them to keep using the existing tools they are already very familiar with (for example MS Excel, Tableau Software, Business Objects and other tools).
We integrate IT infrastructure with knowledge of business analytics and visualization, based on up-to-date findings in information design and cognitive psychology.
In our projects, we put in use the most modern business intelligence technology, such as OLAP (On-Line Analytical Processing), and tools for visual analytics, management reporting, planning and dashboard building. We have been familiar with the majority of these systems since their earliest versions and we keep a watchful eye on new product developments. We mostly collaborate with Microsoft (MS SQL Server, MS Analysis Services, MS SharePoint, MS Reporting Services, MS Excel Services and PowerPivot tools) and we use Zebra BI for visual analytics, business reporting and building BI dashboards.
We can quickly connect our solutions to different data sources such as SAP R/3, SAP BW, Microsoft Dynamics NAV and CRM, and other systems. Since we also integrate external business information into our solutions, we cooperate with market analysis agencies such as AC Nielsen, MEMRB, IMS and others.