Data is an essential part of managing a heavy equipment dealership, which means employees need timely, reliable access to clear data insights. But it can be challenging to find software tools that are consistent, trustworthy, and easy to use.
Often, IT teams are tasked with finding a business intelligence (BI) solution to simplify and streamline their reporting and analytics processes. With countless options available, sorting through the noise can be time-consuming and frustrating.
Your dealership’s BI solution of choice needs to be easy to manage, handle large data volumes efficiently, and seamlessly fit into your employees’ daily workflows. In the equipment industry, user-friendliness is non-negotiable — your teams won’t be excited about implementing a new tool that’s complex or requires hours of technical training.
Here are several key factors CIOs, IT Directors, and IT Managers should look for in a BI solution for their equipment dealership:
#1 Performance and Speed
Dealers need the ability to manage large amounts of operational data and external information. In some cases, this significant amount of data can slow down the querying process, which results in delayed reporting.
Before you commit to a solution, your analysts or IT team should test the back end of the software to ensure it can handle your current as well as future data volumes.
This is also a good time to explore the benefits of aggregating your data into a comprehensive data warehouse, which will ensure uniform data structures and highly accurate reporting based on all of the information at your dealership’s disposal.
#2 End-User Accessibility
Even the most impressive BI tools won’t do much good if they’re too complicated or time-consuming for your employees to use in their day-to-day.
Employees’ exposure to and reliance on business intelligence vary across organizations and departments. In most companies, some users will need access to advanced analytical functionality, some need access to a few dashboards and reports through their mobile devices, and others might just need to follow a few KPIs on a screen in their working environment.
Identifying your target audience and understanding how they best use and consume BI is the fastest way to achieve positive ROI. Start by listing the types of BI user personas within your organization, and which personas will use your new solution most often. Example BI personas include:
Information Consumers
These users receive the reports and dashboards produced by specialists and will use them to track key processes. In short, they want a quick glance at their fingertips. Typically, these are people like executives, board members, managers, partners, and third-party suppliers.
Business Users
Business Users are more familiar with the key features of a BI solution and are comfortable using them to set up alerts and add criteria. They’re skilled in sharing data to motivate employees and teams. C-Level, directors, and department leads often fall into this category.
Business Analysts
These users exemplify an increased use of BI capabilities and will test their hypotheses without the help of IT. Business analysts, marketing analysts, business developers, and data scientists are Business Analysts who excel in navigating the information available to them.
Information Designers
Information Designers have strong data visualization skills. They design the reports, dashboards, and analyses that the other personas use on a daily basis. Information officers, BI managers, and IT often fall into this category and serve as an organization’s BI experts.
Choose a BI analytics tool that allows you to offer tailored experiences and interfaces for members of different departments and roles, potentially through multiple license types and custom startup screens. It should be simple to quickly direct attention toward what’s most important for the team or an individual employee. This nimble use and management of data helps support an agile organization.
#3 Access to Data Sources
An effective BI solution seamlessly integrates both internal (ERP, CRM, Financial, Sales data) and external (social media, Google Analytics, market data) data sources. The capability to combine and analyze data from disparate systems is crucial for robust analytics.
#4 Robust Security and Data Governance Controls
Your chosen solution should make it simple to manage users’ rights, roles, and access to various types of data. Look for a platform that allows you to quickly and securely manage permissions to ensure the right users have access to view and/or create dashboards, reports, and analyses that are relevant to them.
At the same time, you should look for a solution that lets you easily restrict users from accessing sensitive information like payroll or other financial data while still enabling them to drill down into details behind the dashboards and analyses they do have access to. For example, when a branch manager opens the sales report, they should only be able to see data associated with their specific branch.
Look for solutions that go a step further by allowing technical users to pre-define which filters end-users can access and modify. This approach balances security with end-user autonomy.
The bottom line is that your BI solution’s security must be flexible across all users, support different levels of permissions for reports, dashboards, and analyses, and let you configure all of the following:
- Databases: Security is established for users based on what data sources they can see.
- Folder access: Folders and menus should be set up by departments, and security should restrict access to those who shouldn’t see other areas of the business.
- Log in and start pages: Each user needs a unique login that’s defined by the type of user or group.
#5 A Single, Trustworthy Data Overview
All of your dealership’s dashboards, reports, and settings should be stored in a single location for easy management and backup.
You’ll want to ensure your new solution offers daily or weekly data refreshes, as well as backups of important historical data. That way, you can keep a timely eye on your day-to-day operations and use data from the past to analyze trends and build forecasts based on historical performance.
In today’s hyper-connected world, it’s also important that all users have easy access to the information they need from all work devices — laptops, desktops, mobile, and other internet-enabled platforms. They should be able to easily access the latest data anytime, anywhere.
#6 Scalability and Flexibility
Your dealership’s BI and analytics solution shouldn’t just support your organization’s current state; it should be adaptable and scale alongside your operations.
Look for a solution that can connect to many data sources, backed by a development team focused on bringing new features, data connectors, and tailored BI tools to your organization. It should also be easy to scale your user licenses up or down based on demand within your dealership.
By investing in an intuitive solution and prioritizing user adoption from the start, you’ll be able to truly integrate data into your employees’ daily workflows. This opens the door for innovation and expansion of reports and analyses over time, so it’s essential that your solution meets your current and future needs.
Discover Expert Strategies to Guide Your New BI Implementation
Whether you're implementing a new BI solution, ERP, or DMS, choosing the best-fit software is only half the battle.
How your dealership prepares for and manages a new software implementations is also critical to success. Get insights and tips in our on-demand webinar, Embracing Automation: Strategies for Implementing New Tech at Your Dealership.
