Posted by Petrissia Teo May 23, 2022 2:00:00 PM

Managing a company is an extremely difficult task. Sometimes, unexpected obstacles can emerge, and they can be difficult to overcome without clear business needs and priorities in mind. You would also need to include balancing different stakeholders’ needs, making sure you have enough clients, and being able to provide for your employees every month. With these challenges, it is vital to identify business needs so that you can constantly improve your workflows and grow your company.

Yet, what are business needs and how do you identify them with the help of data? Why is it important to identify them, and how do they impact the way you run your business? 

Read on to find out and learn to take advantage of data advancements today!

What are business needs and why are they so important?

According to CEOpedia, business needs are gaps between the current state of the company and its goals. Needs are the basic factors of changes in the organisation, which are defined as requirements and implemented by employing people, implementing projects, transforming operations and purchasing goods.

In essence, business needs are the company's needs that describe the company’s business goals that need to be met, and also identify the problems which the company needs to solve. They set the scene for what will happen at the beginning of the project, such as the scope of the solution options to consider, a set of stakeholders to engage and appropriate approaches to evaluation.

It is important to list the business needs for every project in the company so that all stakeholders are aware of the problems that they need to tackle. By doing so, stakeholders can then come up with an action plan to address the problem or opportunity. When the business needs are unclear, it can be difficult for organisations to stay focused as they may react too quickly to problems and cause inefficiency in resolving the issues.

These business needs can also be referred to when coming up with suitable Key Point Indicators (KPIs) to evaluate the success of implemented solutions. This is useful when meeting similar business needs in the future, as successful solutions can then be applied and adapted to answer new business needs.

How do we identify business needs?

Now that you have understood the importance of stating business needs clearly for each project, the next question would be ways to identify them.

Business needs for each company project can be identified in 3 simple steps:

  • Verify that your business needs are in line with the goals and business objectives of your organisation. According to Simplicable, these business needs can also be categorised according to the 18 types of business needs.
  • Clearly identify the business problem and its cause. It would also be beneficial to evaluate the risks and benefits of solving this particular problem to decide if it is worth taking on. 
  • Create a well-written description of the desired result that results from satisfying your business needs. 

Data can also be made use of to help keep business needs aligned with project objectives. Using data analytics, metrics or KPIs such as sales numbers, number of clients, and even social engagement rates can be monitored. This is helpful when evaluating the success of the ongoing project during the mid-point or quarter mark. From there, by measuring the observed metrics or KPIs according to your project goals, you would be able to make the necessary changes to keep the progress aligned with your business needs. 

With the help of data analytics, it can be much easier to meet your business needs and help to keep your project requirements on track. For example, Tessaract’s all-in-one system helps to monitor caseloads and build an integrated database to keep track of all data. This allows you to spot business trends over time, which could be useful in future projects as you can make use of such trends when coming up with strategies. It could also be useful for identifying things you should eliminate from your processes, such as redundant or unproductive steps in your workflows.

You could also make use of other business insights from data, such as the customer churn rate, and the reasons behind why customers chose to stop working with your business. This information would be useful when improving your company’s workflows, allowing you to quickly and accurately identify, and then resolve these customer pain points. 

What other tools do you need to help your business?

Apart from being able to identify business needs with data, it would also be helpful for you to invest in business management software to help speed up your processes. Although it may seem unnecessary, having business management software would be extremely helpful and provide you with many benefits.

For example, such software would be able to do workflow automation, giving you the time you need to focus on higher-level work. Additionally, such software can help to track data such as email threads and provide a clear record of past processes on the system, which would be helpful when identifying problems and coming up with solutions. This would also help avoid miscommunications with your employees since all past records would be on the database.

One such tool is Tessaract’s business management software. With our integrated database, you would be able to sieve through all past records of previous clients, access records even from employees who have left the company, and avoid the need to switch between multiple files or interfaces from different software providers. Furthermore, customisable forms can be used to automate administrative procedures easily and these forms can be duplicated for editing with a single click. Notifications and email reminders can also be sent out quickly according to the type of business context, and clients can even check the system to view their case status. In this way, the business management software can even double up as a project management tool.

Therefore, a business management software would be the perfect tool as it has many advantages - apart from helping you to identify business needs, it provides automation and data storage, which will help your company to grow into a more efficient and effective entity. 

If you would like to learn more tips and tricks with Tessaract, check out our other blog posts on building an effective weekly work plan template through 7 essential steps, 6 repetitive tasks that can be replaced by workflow automation, and the secret ways to increase your workplace productivity

On top of that, you can also learn how to stay ahead with the cloud and power your business with Tessaract’s business management software. Find out more by requesting a demo with us today!

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Petrissia Teo

Written by Petrissia Teo