When companies go shopping for a B2B integration solution, the features they generally look for revolve around core data processing services. Many look for broad application functionality, and the smartest ones look for ease-of-use in terms of customer onboarding and business user management. One feature that gets almost universally overlooked when it comes to B2B Integration Software, however, is data visualization in real-time through human workflows and dashboards.
Think about the difference visualized data can make in a business setting. Raw data needs to be sifted, organized, and studied in order to be easily understood and acted upon. If data is not presented in a visually rich way, nobody is going to to be compelled or convinced of anything. The fact is, how data is presented matters.
Visualizing B2B Data Can Have Enterprise-Wide Benefits
This is why data visualization is actually a major feature to look for when shopping for B2B integration software. With it, companies can turn raw data into business insights and ultimately into faster decisions about strategy, operations, supply chains, logistics, and more. Used effectively, a data visualization tool can help guide a company into cutting costs, improving operational processes, and growing the business overall. By embedding human workflow steps in the process flows, you provide meaningful data to the end-users who can consume, analyze, and make decisions in real-time. The value is “real-time data consumption” and making meaningful decisions based on that information — it’s real-time data being looked at by business or data custodians, not static data.
On top of this, effective data visualization capabilities can also help identify overall data quality, resulting in the ability to refine and improve sales and marketing results. Since data is not always complete and often comes from multiple sources and across platforms, it needs to be reviewed and corrected in order to achieve greater reporting accuracy.
An Example Of Effective Data Visualization And Its Benefit
Suppose an executive team for a large insurance company is viewing monthly customer data obtained through customer surveys, inquiries and support tickets. The team is presented with a bar chart that shows that the company’s net promoter score (NPS; willingness among customers to recommend a company or its products/services) has dipped by five points over the past month in the Midwestern United States. The data suggests that there’s a problem with customer satisfaction in this territory, but doesn’t provide any insights about why NPS scores have tumbled.
Instead, what if their B2B integration software was able to 1) automatically derive and aggregate this data with no manual intervention and 2) provide a multi-faceted view of the business and operating dynamics. This type of data visualization permits the senior leadership team to see the first-contact resolution rates in a Midwest customer call center have recently taken a nosedive, dramatically impacting customer satisfaction. The ability to make these types of correlations allows the executives to identify the root cause of the problem and act quickly to resolve it.
Why Don’t More Integration Vendors Provide B2B Data Visualization?
Surprisingly, most integration vendors don’t provide a rich data visualization capability despite the fact that it is an increasing necessity across numerous industries. Most B2B integration solutions not only lack business-user-friendly reports, web forms, and dashboards, they also require time-consuming and expensive custom coding to produce new visualized data reports. Since nobody has the time to sift through raw b2b data, most companies opt to pay a bundle for outsourced custom-coding services. In addition, there is a large amount of upkeep needed as companies continue to transform in their respective markets.
B2B data visualization can be utilized for enterprise-wide strategy, it can cut costs, and it can save precious time and energy. What this really comes down to, though, is the level of simplicity for users. It’s more crucial than most companies realize, and it’s in their best interests to choose an integration solution that includes data visualization as part of its core functionality. Keep that in mind next time you go shopping for B2B Integration software.
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