SVA Consulting Principal Jenny Herritz recently presented for a Financial Executives International (FEI) CFO Roundtable in Madison, WI. The roundtable offers a group of strong peers who learn from each other, share best practices, build new perspectives, and help members improve big decisions throughout the year. FEI’s CFO Roundtable has one goal: to empower one another to reach new levels of extraordinary success.

Jenny’s presentation, titled Using Data and Business Intelligence to Drive Results, discussed best practices, industry trends, and lessons learned regarding using data to a company’s advantage. Data-driven companies that harness insights across their organization to create competitive advantage are growing at an average of more than 30% annually. These organizations use data to take decisive action as well as teach and empower people on how best to leverage it. There are five lessons to be learned from those organizations that do this well.

1. Business First: Start with your strategy / plan, identify your metrics, measure, and automate. Think about the business questions you want to answer and how you’d act on that information.
2. Don’t just buy something: Buying software or thinking you have a silver bullet just creates more noise, faster. Automating a bad process just makes the bad process faster.
3. Analytics isn’t just for the “Big Guys”: Prioritize what you need and use the experience and outcomes to lead you to expand your footprint.
4. Consider your holistic systems infrastructure: Done right, you can get more mileage out of your investment if you consider it as part of your holistic business infrastructure, as well as a tool in your transformation strategy.
5. Drive results: Use analytics as a gift of autonomy to your team. Show them what “good” looks like, how to get there, and their progress. It’s a win-win for all.

Jenny is a Principal with SVA Consulting, LLC, a member of the SVA family of companies. In her role as a business and technology advisor, Jenny specializes in helping companies achieve their goals by effectively leveraging their business systems and information. Her background leading both business systems and business intelligence implementations gives her a unique perspective and ability to leverage the strengths of both, helping companies gain competitive advantage from their investments.