Data & intelligence
A number nobody trusts is worse than no number.
When two reports disagree, the meeting stops being about the business and becomes an argument about the data. Most reporting projects fail there, before anyone gets to the insight.
What is business intelligence for a small or mid-sized company?
Business intelligence is the work of turning data held across separate systems into a small number of measures leadership can trust and act on. For most mid-sized companies the hard part is not the dashboard — it is agreeing what each measure means and making sure it is produced the same way every time. CompanyWRX starts with definitions and data sources, then builds the reporting.
What the work involves
- Establish which numbers the business can currently trust, and which are quietly assembled by hand each month.
- Define each measure precisely enough that two people calculate it identically.
- Connect the source systems, so the number is produced rather than compiled.
- Build reporting people actually open — which means few measures, clearly, on the device they will read it on.
- Automate the executive reporting so it arrives without anyone building it.
What you hold afterward
- A small set of measures you trust, each with a written definition and a known source.
- Dashboards and automated reporting produced from live systems.
- A scorecard a leadership team can read in five minutes.
A number without a reason attached is not intelligence. It is decoration.
When this is the wrong thing to buy
If nobody has decided what the business is actually managing toward, a dashboard will not decide it for you. It will produce thirty charts and no decisions. Agree the handful of measures that matter first.
Questions
Business intelligence, in practice.
Which tools do you use?
Whatever suits the data and the people reading it — including reporting built into systems you already own. The tool is the least important decision here and it is frequently the only one people want to discuss.
Why do our reports disagree?
Almost always because the same word means different things in two systems — "job", "lead" and "revenue" are the usual three. That is a definition problem, and no tool fixes it.
Can you benchmark us against similar companies?
Comparison is only meaningful when the underlying measures are defined the same way, which is why this starts with definitions. A percentile with no reason attached tells you nothing you can act on.
Where this usually leads
This rarely arrives on its own.
Two reports disagree and the meeting becomes an argument about the data.
If the outcome is what you are after
- Improve operationsYou fix the same thing every few months. Everyone is busy and nobody can say what changed. Good people are struggling in ways that do not match their ability.
- Scale a businessRevenue is up and it does not feel better. Everything still reaches you. You are hiring, and it is not helping as much as it should.
Usually done alongside
- Operations consultingFinding what is actually getting in the way — by following the work, talking to the people doing it, and fixing what can be fixed immediately.
- Software integrationConnecting the systems you already run so data moves between them automatically — instead of a person re-typing it from one screen into another.
- MarketingMarketing strategy, paid search, social and content — with attribution wired back to booked work, so you can tell which spend produced revenue.
Not sure this is your problem?That is usually the most useful thing to find out first.
Answer thirteen questions about how your company actually runs and get a reading on each area — brand, website, search, reviews, software, automation, payments, operations, people, data and continuity.
Typically owner-led companies from first idea to around 500 people.