There are many, many things that could be the next big thing in business. However, I would like to make an argument that maybe there shouldn’t be another thing brought into the mix, but actually an evaluation of current processes should be a priority.
I think it is hard to understand sometimes when you work in IT, that other areas of the business are in general less innovative. But, within IT itself we can start playing with gadgets and talk about buzzword ideas before looking at our own processes.
One of my biggest pet hates are manual reports.
Why is somebody still spending 3 hours a week manually gathering data to put into a PowerPoint slide to be emailed out?
There are tools (free and priced) that you do not need to be a data analyst to use. You just put the database source name and password into the tool, you can also have several databases going into one tool, and then it will extract the data automatically when you want it to and you just have to create a dashboard once and that is it.
You can export the diagrams as PDFs or Jpegs. You can also create PowerPoint presentations within the tool. And because these tools are web applications, you can give permissions to others for them to view the dashboards whenever they please, which means no more emails which are most likely to get ignored. No issues when the person who runs the manual report is off sick or on holiday. Even better is because they are web applications, you can have them to be viewed within your team’s business practices such as, as web parts on SharePoint or Teams.
My preferred tools are Qlik Sense and Power BI.
Top Tip: review your current practices before adding the next thing in business to your workload.
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