What Data is needed to make Key Decisions?

By: Melissa Dixon, Senior Manager, Capital Edge Consulting 

Each business is unique.  Even close competitors have differentiators that enable their capabilities to stand out.  Commonality across companies comes from our process and approach to answer the question of what data is needed to drive better and faster business outcomes.  While it takes time, collaboration, and engagement from our experienced consultants as well as company subject matter experts to gather information and create impactful solutions, the return on that investment is impactful insights to transform business acumen, speed, agility, and empower leaders to make confident, data-driven decisions.

Step 1: Where are you now?

The first step is to look at the current state and assess current reporting practices.

• What reports are currently generated?
• What KPIs do you measure now for business performance?
• How is the data collected for the reports?
• How are the reports generated? (Manual? Automated? When? Who?)
• How do you use the data?
• Why do you need it?
• What decisions are made using this data?

Step 2: What data is needed to make key decisions?

The second step is to look at what the future state should look like considering the company’s business objectives.

• What decisions are being made? Are there any that you wish you had more data to make? What is the frequency of these decisions?
• What are your current risks and challenges?
• What are your current business drivers / initiatives / goals?
• What outcomes are you trying to achieve?
• Are there any business trends that could be helpful to better understand?

Step 3: Create a plan for enterprise reporting

The third step is for our consultants to work collaboratively with stakeholders to create a prioritized list and an action plan to create the required business intelligence, data, analytics, reports, and dashboards for the company.

Capital Edge Consulting is a professional services company comprised of adept problem solvers who deliver tangible results to address today’s most complex U.S. government contracting challenges. Capital Edge helps clients address the challenging regulatory, contractual, and compliance requirements of U.S. federal contracts and we have experience working with a wide variety of industries that provide goods or services to the federal government including industries such as biotech and healthcare, nuclear energy, education, information technology, non-profit, professional services, defense, and software.