The war in Ukraine brought about global change and became a key cause of the current global crisis. Even last year, countries, businesses and citizens had already begun to feel its impact in everyday life.
According to a recent United Nations Organization forecast, in 2023 the growth of the global economy will slow down to its lowest level in a decade. While the United States of America’s economic growth will decrease from 1.8 per cent in 2022 to 0.4 per cent in 2023.
In these kinds of conditions, American businesses need to start thinking of how they’re going to tackle this series of new challenges to ensure their survival. We’ve taken it upon ourselves to figure out how companies can adapt faster to these new conditions and what can help them to stay afloat during current and future unstable periods.
Digital transformation is a must
Digital transformation in business is not a new concept. The integration of technology into all areas of business starting from services for clients to management and data treatment has facilitated company growth, made the KPIs better and changed business processes drastically.
Take the consumer industry as an example, technology has been significantly improving the quality and the speed of service delivery. Every year the clients’ demands grow which means that companies need to match them. By implementing innovative technology they created a unique client experience, while offering the client not just simple, first-rate services and goods but also a positive experience. Which in turn means that the clients will certainly return for future cooperation.
Even though the need for the transformation for the client’s benefit may seem obvious, the matter of big data treatment is not realized by many executives and owners until the end.
Many American companies, especially small and medium sized businesses still face sizeable difficulties when it comes to the treatment of big data. Doing it via classical methods i.e. almost by hand or using outdated technology, they lose weeks, or even months and months from information acquisition and analysis of their own metrics.
As a result, executives and members of the board of directors often have incomplete information or get the analytics too late. Decisions made from those numbers and results are undoubtedly too late or ineffective. And delay, especially during a crisis, can be fatal for a company.
Economists are sure that businesses who have started the process of digital transformation sooner, and made an effort to deal with big data earlier will pass the hard times quicker and easier.
The most progressive companies already have special employees on their staff or have hired the experts of transformation and business intelligence by outsourcing. The perceived value and advantages of business analytics implementation are so high that they are even prepared to wait for the contracts’ terms and pay several times over just to get the best professional company dashboards in the industry.
Data-driven Decisions: the time matters
One such expert is Dmytro Chashnyk, the Ukrainian entrepreneur, technology-architect, CEO and founder of Cobit Solutions. Dmytro is sure technology of big data treatment can help businesses to reach a new level of quality in the short term. Executives can make faster and more effective decisions with them. It means that companies will become more flexible and be better prepared to adapt to new conditions.
Dmytro knows what he’s talking about. He has a rich experience of working in countries with unstable and dynamic economics such as Ukraine and it’s provided him with the best understanding of what is necessary for businesses during a crisis.
His company Cobit Solutions specializes in Power BI implementation and data-driven decision making. In simple words, Dmytro is dealing with the analytical process of automatization and turning huge amounts of data, not only into useful and elegant dashboard for company, but ultimately business solutions.
It is much more simple to analyze the state of a company, when you’re able to see all the indexes, not in huge Excel tables, but on applications such as a private phone or laptop with 3-5 precise numbers and charts available to them.
It’s certain to appear as though it’s a new reality for those who have spent weeks and months crunching numbers via outdated methods.
Dmytro’s team provides the development of such systems and business dashboards.
It makes solutions which save customers hundreds of thousands of dollars and thousands of man hours. For example, one of the first of Dmytro’s clients that embraced business intelligence system development, saved USD 215,000 in the first month.
For a large client in Uzbekistan, he has created a system that consolidates financial data in 5 minutes, which before required 3 weeks by a team of 20 people. It allows them to control and increase business profitability, and analyze the numbers more often. This in turn means more effective and swift decisions.
Progressive ideas paired with an innovative vision helped Dmytro build a successful career in IT, and progress all the way from a hands-on system administrator to the CIO of the largest media group in Ukraine. Once faced with Power BI, he saw great advantages of this technology for the Ukrainian market. At that time, local companies used more outdated attitudes in business processes, аnd data-driven decisions were used only by the top players. So Dmytro got a chance to make his own imprint onto his country’s economic development; a big reason why he left a highly paid post to forge his own business.
Very soon Cobit Solutions became a leader in the Ukrainian market and enjoyed successful cases with largest enterprises in manufacturing, logistics, finances, healthcare, fashion retail and others. As time went on, requests came from other countries appeared too. As of today Dmytro has implemented professional dashboards projects in 22 industries and has worked with clients from Canada, Kazakhstan, USA, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.
He is sure that everybody wins from the implementation of business analytics systems and a data-driven attitude to management. More effective business decisions bring more profit to the company, which in turn means more taxes are paid to the country’s budget.
Comprehensive vision and flexible approach in Power BI consulting
Nowadays demand for development of data warehouse and Power BI implementation far exceeds the supply in the American market.
Taking into account the technology and how many thousands of dollars it saves the companies which implement it, headhunters search for the best technology-architects around, people like Dmytro Chashnyk.
The configuration of the business analytics system Power BI is always specific. It is created for each company separately, and takes into account its unique requirements and tasks. So it is not enough to simply know the technology itself, or just have experience in IT.
Even the most talented IT-director cannot not always see the whole picture. Their solution can be seen as ideal from a technical point of view, but at the same time not correspond with the business demands or just simply be unprofitable.
A rich background in the IT sphere, as well as knowledge in finance and business management have helped Dmytro see a clearer picture. Consequently, he offers solutions which are not only technically successful, but are profitable for the company from a financial and managerial point of view. His team of 12 experts is experienced in different areas – from consulting, finances and business-management to specialists of analytical systems and IT in general.
Together they find the most effective solutions for tasks considered outside the box.
To look at another example of a large pay day loans (PDL) company, Dmytro and Cobit Solutions were able to solve the problem of data analysis and forecast of income. Dmytro’s team created the system, which analyzed the history of company and the collectors effectiveness, with further automation of work for each employee per day. Based on their current data, a forecast was made of the company’s income for each day, week, month and year. In addition, the system studied the results of each collector and corrected the plan in business dashboards. Prediction accuracy was a very high 98.5%.
Based on this data, executives were able to get actual information in a clear and simple way at any time, which meant they could quickly make the best decisions for the business. This is without mentioning the increased possibility for the company’s development and ability to attract more business due to such an accurate model. It meant a much larger amount of investment in its working capital.
Another client from the fashion retail industry saw an increase in company margins for the year by 32% after Dmytro developed a business analytical system.
A comprehensive vision of business, the synergy of knowledge from finance and IT, and a deep understanding of the task at hand are the undeniable advantages that Dmytro and his team Cobit Solutions possess. But this is just one reason why the largest companies trust him with their most valuable thing – their data.
The second reason is speed. During 4-5 months, the Cobit Solutions team can implement what similar outsourced companies in the US do in a year or two. At the same time, offering a cost between 5-7 times lower than other players on the market can.
In times of economic instability, time to market is especially important. It is a huge conservation of resources, which are at a shortage during a crisis. In addition, the faster a company transforms and adapts to the new realities that it faces, the more likely it is to survive.