The biggest financial mistakes that can ruin your business

Get to know the biggest financial mistakes that can harm your business

In the business world, the margin for error is very small. However, all managers eventually go wrong at some point in their lives and some of these mistakes can be fatal to the survival of the company. In this article we present you the biggest financial mistakes that can ruin your business.

Lack of discipline

Entrepreneurs initially control the company’s expenses and are disciplined with expenses. Over time and with the accumulation of work, they end up skulking in this field and accumulate budgets to approve and invoices to pay. It’s fundamental that every day the businessman take some time to dealing with these issues. In this way, work will flow more easily and there will be no accumulation of tasks.

Don’t pay all bills on time

Lack of liquidity often leads to delay of bills’ payment. This is a very common mistake because failure to pay within the set deadline will lead to greater problems in the future. At the level of suppliers, you may have difficulties in working with them later and at the level of Bank credits may obstruct access to credit in the future. The ideal is to use a software that allows you to keep track of all expenses in real time, so as not to let you accumulate accounts.

Invest in the wrong areas

As a rule, entrepreneurs have enough capital to invest, but often apply money in areas of little relevance to the company. There is also the idea that it isn’t necessary to invest in marketing, for example, and this leads to the company’s products or services being little publicized, resulting in low sales and few profits. This mistake happens a lot when the entrepreneurs don’t properly research the market and end up not knowing the sector of activity in which they are, making mistakes that may be irreparable in the future.

Lack of planning for low seasons

All businesses have prosperous times and less happy times and you have to be prepared to face them. Many companies don’t prepare adequately for the times when they are going to have less profits and they forget that even at these times there are financial commitments that have to be fulfilled (salaries, payments to suppliers, payments of services, among others). Companies should always have in mind that they need to have a comfortable capital so that they can face the bad moments with calm and tranquility.

Poor time management

Time is money. This is especially true in the area of ​​business, and entrepreneurs often spend more time in meetings than they actually need. A meeting should happen only when there is a clear objective and when you know clearly what you want to decide at that moment. Meetings are important, but in some companies they happen too often and take too long, which leads to productivity declines that impact the company’s in the short and long term.

These are the biggest management mistakes made in companies. Dealing with so much information and responsibility isn’t easy, but it’s essential that the entrepreneur doesn’t get lost in the middle of all the tasks he has to do. The good health of the company depends on your organization and management ability!

5 tips from Gartner to analyze your data in real time

Get the tips from Gartner

Gartner is the world’s largest leader in technology advice and research and supports the importance of real-time data analysis for better decision-making. “Real-time analytics can enable data science teams to perform modeling, simulations, and optimizations based on a complete set of transaction data, not just samples,” said one Gartner analyst. In this article, we present you 5 tips from Gartner to properly analyze your data in real time!

Turn time-consuming operational decisions into real-time decisions

Operational decisions are repeated very regularly in a structured way. Changing slow decisions to real-time decisions requires new methodologies. Make data readily available so that operational decisions are based on facts that are happening at the time and not based on old data.

Make frequent changes to simplify processes

Review how decisions are made in your company and find ways to improve it. Let’s use the example of the template used to approve transactions by the company’s credit card. This model is developed once in historical data and is now used to evaluate credit card transactions in real time for several weeks or months. It’s important to monitor the results to ensure that the models work correctly. If they don’t work, you need to modify the rules and analyze often to get the best possible way to decide correctly.

Use business alerts

Business monitoring systems work continuously, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Software such as Multipeers track all events as they occur. You can and should set business alerts to be warned whenever something out of the standard considered normal occurs. In this way, you will be alerted via e-mail and/or SMS about the situations that require your attention. It ensures that you don’t lose any important information about the business and you have the possibility of acting immediately.

Be consistent with the operational method

The use of dashboards with real-time information about the company possibilities you to create a common operating framework for all employees. However, it’s possible to define which indicators each employee will receive so that he receives only the information necessary for the execution of his daily work. In this way, the company has a more organized and focused day-to-day life.

Consider decision-making as a discipline

The management of information for the correct decision making is the progress of the design of systems that make decisions. Decision-making systems are run through rule mechanisms, which are divided between software and people-real decision-makers. Look at this component as important to business success as a discipline, creating rules and working methods that allow you to analyze data correctly and decide securely.

Challenges of real-time information processing

Get to know the main challenges of real-time information processing

In a highly competitive and dynamic market, to have knowledge is to have power and having updated information in real time is an important step to the success of any business. However, this new way of management brings with it numerous challenges and doubts and in this article we talk about it.

Correct definition of business indicators

One of the main problems presented by the management teams is the lack of knowledge about the indicators that are really relevant to the business. A real-time management system gives us up-to-date information on the state of the business, but we need to define the indicators we want to analyze. Often, management teams are uncertain about the indicators that should come to their attention, which is a challenge. It’s essential to have a broad and deep knowledge about the business to be possible to define the most relevant business indicators so that the best decisions can be made. Managers are responsible for deciding what information is needed to run the business in the best way, and they should be aware that it is not a responsibility of IT teams but a responsibility of all the leaders.

Prioritize security

There is still some mistrust about the use of real-time information systems, for fear of information leakage. Increasingly, these real-time business management solutions give importance to security by ensuring that no information is lost or passed on to the outside. Making systems inviolable is always a challenge for IT teams, due to the rapid technological evolution that we see today.

Fast technological evolution

These days, technology is evolving at a breakneck speed, which makes IT teams constantly face the challenge of being up to date. Often, because of a system upgrade or a software change, there are features that become obsolete or fail. Real-time information processing software must be constantly aware of what is happening in the world of technology, so as not to run the risk of facing bugs that can endanger the whole management of a business.

Veracity and reliability

Real-time information management systems face the challenge of presenting real and error-free data. This is an ever-present challenge, because real-time information management systems encompass information from a variety of sources, and the probability of error is higher. However, more and more systems are infallible, increasing the confidence of those who use them on a daily basis.

Adaptability

Nowadays, we can access the Internet anywhere and at any time and mobile phones are prepared to perform tasks that a few years ago could only be performed on a computer. For this reason, the need to receive business updates on mobile devices is greater. Real-time information management systems must be ready to be used on any mobile device because this will increase interest in the product and increase the efficiency of those who use these systems.

Efficient information management and the ability to solve problems before they have practical effects are a critical point for companies. Through the use of information management systems in real time it’s possible to have a more assertive and global monitoring of the whole business. The challenges of managing information will always be present but due to technological developments, it’s becoming easier to follow the business to the minute.

The importance of real time information in Business

Find the need for real-time information currently

The evolution of technology makes changes happen at an ever-increasing speed and in today’s fast-paced business world, every second counts. Being constantly updated ensures speed and efficiency in decision making, and it helps creating competitive advantages that will result in an increased value for company.

Markets are becoming more competitive and consumers, as they are more informed than before, are increasingly demanding and are looking for solutions in a practical and fast way. Nowadays, everyone “lives on the run” so that acting late in the business sector may imply a loss of profit. Let’s imagine the following scenarios:

Scenario 1

Antonio has a store chain of decoration that usually has very good results, regardless of the time of year. However, in week 30 of year Y, sales decreased dramatically. Antonio uses a traditional management system and analyzes the data always at the end of the week and was very surprised when found that the values ​​were so low. He wondered why sales so suddenly dropped and found that his most direct competitor had made a 20% discount campaign in that week. Antonio decided to launch a campaign for the following week that offered a 30% discount. However, as people had already seen their needs resolved, they didn’t buy at Antonio’s stores.

Scenario 2

João has a store chair of decoration that normally has good results, regardless of the time of year. However, in week 30 of year Y, sales decreased dramatically. João uses a business monitoring system (BAM) so he realized that something was happening on the first day of the week. He wondered why sales were lower than usual and found that his most direct competitor was running a 20 percent discount campaign. He made an appointment with the sales and marketing teams and quickly defined that they would launch a campaign that offered a 30% discount. After promoting the campaign, sales increased and there was no drop in the company’s monthly profit.

According to the scenarios presented above, we can said that having a BAM system is beneficial to the business because it allows you to detect problems immediately and act instantly. Business intelligence systems are essential to ensure effective follow-up of business events. Access to real-time information allows you to “take a picture” of the exact status that business is, which greatly influences decision-making and processes flow easier and don’t compromise company’s productivity.

Data available in real time presupposes the possibility of carrying out immediate analyzes, which brings with it obvious benefits: dynamism and speed for the management of operations and greater efficiency for the decision process.

Having business intelligence is knowing how to react to change, managing processes confidently, based on accurate information. In order to get the most benefit from real-time analysis, it’s necessary to define the most relevant indicators for the business and, consequently, optimize operational aspects. Managing a business proactively with very positive results is increasingly possible due to the range of available tools in the market.

How Technology Has Changed Decision Making

Learn how technology has influenced decision making

The large amount of information that currently exists is a concern for companies, which increasingly find it difficult to manage this information and manage it in order to take the better decisions.  In the old days, technology was used only to automate tasks and to reduce the need for human work, but today it enriches the entire organizational process, optimizing activities, eliminating communication barriers, among other advantages. Management software has played a key role in helping managers to make assertive and conscious decisions. In this article we talk about how technology has changed decision making!

Real-time information: the possibility of accessing the information in real time changes everything because it’s the guarantee that we are always working based on the most current information that exists. Decision making is made easier because there is no need to consult old reports to decide what to do next. With information so accessible, the likelihood of making decisions is much lower, which certainly increases the efficiency of companies.

Creating Business Alerts: Real-time information management software such as Multipeers enables you to set up business alerts that alert managers to abnormal situations that require your attention. This fact makes it possible for managers to carry out their day-to-day tasks in a quiet way because they know they will be alerted when something abnormal happens. This allows corrective actions to be taken immediately, ensuring the rapid resolution of problems.

Mobility facilitates follow-up: Being able to track the status of the organization through the tablet or smartphone is essential for an effective proximity to the business. More and more we use mobile devices and we manage many of the operations through them (reading and sending emails, doing banking transactions, among others). The availability of real-time information for mobile devices allows us to be always attentive to everything that is important in the organization, so that there is no loss of time in decision-making.

More dynamic management: the data available in real time allows instant analysis and decisions are more conscious and efficient.

Immediate perception of the problems: real-time information informs us about the state of things, which allows us to know in good time what is going wrong, so that we can solve the situations. With this new management model, it isn’t necessary to use old reports to find out why something went wrong, because we are alerted immediately.

Technology has changed the way we live and the way we work. With technology, it’s easier to access information and, consequently, to make better decisions that allow the company to achieve success!

Find the concept and applications of Business Activity Monitoring

Everything you need to know about business activity monitoring

Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) enables real-time access to business-critical activity indicators. BAM analyzes the information, reports and issues alerts related to important and relevant events for business operation. The main objective of this concept is to allow quick and effective decisions in order to guarantee the success of the company.

The sources of information that feed BAM are mainly the events generated by business applications. Implementing this concept means dealing with the complexity of gathering events from multiple applications. With a BAM tool it’s possible to monitor processes by following their steps and identifying problems in useful time, aggregating data from different systems, processing complex events and obtaining context information.

Normally, BAM tools are offered in a Web context in order to facilitate access. These tools provide a graphical interface to display the various business data, usually in the form of a dashboard. A dashboard is the set of a series of graphs viewed together, in which each graph can appear in a different format (bars, round, among others) and each one presents a different indicator of business.

The architecture of a BAM product is variable according to the tool. However, the structure normally used is as follows:

  • Development interface: it allows the development of the graphics by the developers and the definition of the data by the architects;
  • Presentation interface: it’s the user interface with the tool, allowing the visualization of dashboards;
  • Databases: it’s the repository of information that is displayed in the BAM presentation layer. The data displayed in BAM is originated from other systems (BPMS, ERP, Database, etc.), but BAM tools usually have their own database for storing this information, reducing the need of searching the information at any moment in the systems of origin;
  • Integration layer: it’s the layer that allows integration of the BAM tool with other systems and data sources;
  • Administration interface: it’s responsible for defining users and profiles/access restrictions, as well as integrations with existing user repositories;
  • Alerts/Actions Monitoring: it’s responsible for verifying the change and deviation of the indicators values ​​and triggering treatment actions (like sending e-mail or alert SMS).

A BAM tool is not a data source because it only compiles and displays data from other systems or data sources. The correct use of a BAM system depends on the correct definition of important indicators for a constant analysis of the business.

Using a BAM system will allow you to know in proper time what it’s important in your company, without having to look for information in several places. These tools are able to consolidate all the information and to present it in a practical and easy way.

Multipeers is a BAM tool that allows you to have all the business information sent to the user whenever something important happens even when he’s not at the work station. In addition to ensuring that up-to-date information is always available, the information is delivered in a graphically clean and interactive way, allowing immediate analysis and action, thereby improving individual performance and increasing organizational efficiency.