Using Technology to Improve Client Profitability

Even established, successful companies can find themselves facing hard economic times and falling revenues and profitability. If this sounds all too familiar for your business, why not use technology to improve your client’s profitability?

Hiring an Expert Vs Doing It Yourself

During these difficult times, firms often hire a turnaround expert or a senior management consultant who has the expertise to give them the advice they need to return to profitability. These consultants are experts in business and come to the table with a broad range of strategic experience covering many industries.

If you want to avoid hiring and become a management consultant who provides senior-level expertise to firms just like yours, you’ll need a degree in business from one of the leading universities. You should also take as many technology courses as you can as part of your degree program.

Top university programs are very expensive these days, so it’s best to consider taking out private student loans to help finance your education. Your earnings as a management consultant will let you pay off the loans quickly and, if your parents cosign on the loan, you’ll easily be able to qualify for financing.

Creating a Data Warehouse

Most companies have invested in operational systems and software that handles cornerstone processes such as order processing, finance, and human resources. These systems can provide some financial insights and are typically used to produce standard sales reporting.

To truly get a window into the soul of the business, though, you need to create a data warehouse that contains all the information you need to thoroughly research and assess a company’s revenue trends and profitability. With a data warehouse, you basically pull all the transaction data for the entire company into one information repository.

The data can then be used to create a comprehensive picture of everything going on in the firm. As the data is loaded into the warehouse, it is also reformatted to make it very easy to query and get answers to key management questions.

Using Business Intelligence Software to Greatly Improve Profitability

Once you have created your data warehouse, the real fun begins. Typically, if you want to have a report produced you need a programmer to create it and the report will typically look at the data from a single angle if you will. With advanced information tools, you can view the data from many different angles. Each new view, each new report can be created in under a minute and sometimes in seconds.

With this software, you will be able to dive into market trends by region, by the distributor, by time period, and more. A click of the mouse will give you more powerful views of the data and you will be able to quickly see where there have been major changes in revenue and profitability.

Best of all, these tools can be used by executives, department heads, and your technology staff too. A sales manager, for instance, can quickly look into his slumping markets and find out exactly what has changed year to year.