Data-Driven Decisions

April 19, 2018

Written By Michelle Cummings

Sifting through mountains of data sounds dull, but as MFA Oil and other businesses have learned “there’s gold in them thar hills.” As the amount and variety of data available has skyrocketed, new opportunities have surfaced. That’s where MFA Oil’s business intelligence team comes into play. They analyze data to identify key trends and patterns which can be used to create insightful and actionable business information to craft customer solutions.

The MFA Oil business intelligence team, composed of business analysts and information technology staff members, was formed about a year ago. The team studies the company’s data to optimize operational efficiency, spot trends that could lead to potential problems, enhance internal processes and improve customer satisfaction.

“Business intelligence enables MFA Oil to have better responsiveness and be more efficient in how we serve our customers,” says IT services director Jeremi Rowland. “Not only can we improve the profitability of our company, but customers will have more information about their accounts.”

The business intelligence team, which is headed by Matt Boyce, senior development operations manager, is focused on providing employees with the information needed to make fact-based decisions to help customers. The department’s data scientists and analysts review and scrutinize statistics and other information to condense it into easily understood reports for the cooperative’s management team.

“One of the biggest hurdles we face with using business intelligence is believing what the data is telling us,” Rowland says. “We have to trust what the data says, even when it may be telling us to change something we’ve been doing for years.”

The real-time business intelligence reports on sales volumes, trends and customer preferences allow MFA Oil employees to make accurate and timely business decisions, eliminating guesswork. This leads to better inventory management and more accurate resource allocation.

“The new technology will allow us to figure out not only what problems are currently occurring in the company, but we will be able to analyze trends to understand issues that may arise in the future,” Boyce says. “This will help us in many aspects of our business.”

MFA Oil’s business intelligence team also focuses on sorting through any inaccuracies that may be present in the data, whether from human error in manual data entry or through more complicated automated processes.

“Having cleaner and more accurate data internally allows us to provide a more predictive analysis of customer interactions,” Rowland says. “We traditionally have had more fragmented and disconnected data sets as a company, but having a more consolidated system will allow us to create a clearer picture of customer usage patterns.”

As MFA Oil develops a more predictive model for its business through data analyzation, customers can expect more efficient deliveries and better customer responsiveness.

“Business intelligence will especially help us become more accurate in our customer interactions,” Rowland says. “As we become more and more efficient, analyzing this data will not only allow us to uphold the MFA Oil brand, but help us to serve our customers better overall.”