Business Intelligence Delivered: How ACTIVENet Hub Makes It Easy

Creating and implementing a meaningful business intelligence strategy that truly enables an organization to make data driven decisions for growth and sustainability is daunting at best. In recent years the barrier to entry has been lowered dramatically thanks to better data science platforms and cloud computing. However, the challenge remains to do something meaningful with the data. As the CIO of a metropolitan YMCA, I put lots of thought into this very challenge. Yes, I was able to put together dashboards that the C suite found useful, but only with a ton of complicated exporting and manipulation of data in Excel–and only with day-old data. Not a satisfying solution to say the least.

In the latter part of 2020, I was introduced to ACTIVENet Hub and was absolutely fascinated. Here was a platform that provided near real-time data from our ACTIVENet database, yet it was also pre-formatted and consolidated to be straightforward to query. I could pull that data into any reporting or visualization tool I wanted, combine it with other data, such as budgets, staffing or data from our other systems, and even pull in big data sources to understand our customers from their social media and other online activity. It was also easy to integrate it with other services, such as customer survey tools. What potential! 

Now that I’ve joined the ACTIVE Network team I’ve been very focused on working with ACTIVENet Hub data to build the dashboards and reports we so desperately needed at the Y, and to prove that value proposition to be true. Many of the requirements are already met, and we have a substantial collection of sample dashboards built. I’m working with a very talented data team to develop the roadmap and continue to build out additional data elements to feed those reports. It’s important to note, of course, that the COVID-19 crisis hit everyone hard. These visualizations make that impact clear, but more importantly they make the recovery trajectory also clear, helping you visualize your way back to “normal” and beyond.

Consider that much of the challenge of wielding effective business intelligence is in achieving data literacy in the company culture. By making your ACTIVENet data simple and understandable, the ACTIVENet Hub puts you leaps and bounds ahead of your competition. Check out this TechTarget article about developing an enterprise data strategy. When you look at the ACTIVENet Hub, consider how many of these steps have already been achieved for you when you adopt this platform.