Look Ahead, Not Back: Steer Your Business with Real-Time Insights

A daily stand-up meeting with your team every morning. The question that comes up time and time again: “How’s it going?”
The answer lies somewhere in a spreadsheet, an HR system, or in the memory of someone with a good memory. But what if you had all this information in one place—up-to-date, organized, and ready to send?

That's exactly what business intelligence is all about. With a module like Insights, you work with your own data in real time. It's not a standard dashboard that dictates everything to you, but a flexible environment where you decide what you want to see, how you want to present it, and with whom you want to share it.

Insights: Turning Data into Actionable Information

Insights is not a pre-built dashboard, but a data-driven workspace. You create your own reports based on the information that matters most to your business. Whether it’s absenteeism, labor costs, productivity, or planned versus actual performance—you have complete freedom to create, filter, save, and automatically share reports.

Its strength lies in its flexibility: You decide what insights you need and how you want to present them. This gives you not only insight into what’s happening, but also an idea of how you can adapt.

What can you do with it? Here are a few examples

With Insights, you can specifically address issues that would otherwise often only become apparent at a late stage:

• Discover absenteeism trends
  Compare departments or locations side by side and see where absenteeism is increasing structurally. No guesswork—just facts.
• Review conservative forecasts
  Compare the planned implementation with the actual results. Where do you deviate structurally, and why?
• Track labor costs from planning through payment
  Show what you planned, what was actually worked, and what was ultimately paid.
• 
  Productivity Benchmarking Compare teams or locations in terms of performance—such as revenue per hour worked—and identify areas for improvement.
• Creating and Sharing Reports
  Create your own reports, save them, and make sure the right colleagues have access to them in a timely manner.
• Set and Track Goals
  You define the KPIs you consider important on your R&R dashboard. You decide who sees and tracks which KPIs—from HR to site managers. This allows you to work in a focused and transparent way with the numbers that matter.

What does it do?

“We were able to increase our productivity by 2 percent. That may seem small, but on an annual basis, it’s enormous.”

“Every supermarket has its own challenges. Insights shows exactly which levers to pull to solve these problems.”

Often, it's not the spectacular leaps forward, but rather the small, incremental improvements that make all the difference. With real-time reports, you can quickly identify areas where adjustments can be made and work step by step toward better performance.

Would you like more of that? Follow the right training program

Insights offers so many possibilities that it makes sense to master it.
On our training page , weoffer various training courses—including a specialized Insights course —so you can make the most of all its features.

In this training course, you will learn, among other things:

• How to Set Up and Customize Your Own Reports
• What options you can choose from regarding filters, columns, and display
• How to Turn Insights into Concrete Actions Within Your Organization

This way, you can use your data more quickly and effectively and turn insights into concrete results.

In summary

With Insights, you no longer have to rely on outdated figures or gut feelings. You make decisions based on up-to-date, relevant data—allowing you to manage your business in a more targeted and effective way.

Reflection Question
If you were to make an important decision today, would it be based on reason or on emotion?

About the Author Becca Ligthart

Becca Ligthart is a passionate marketing and communications professional who focuses on providing practical tips and new insights for the effective use of WFM in companies, with a strong emphasis on forward-looking processes.