Use business intelligence to

boost sales and profitability

What enterprise doesn't want better sales forecasts, a
better record of hitting sales targets, and increased
profitability per sale? Find out how you can achieve all of
these goals using business intelligence tools.
When organizations are equipped to extract crucial facts from operational data
and then act upon them quickly, the result is often improved selling efficiency
and enhanced profits. The good news is that business intelligence (BI) tools
necessary to support this data analysis are within the grasp of most
organizations.

Effective BI can boost your sales and marketing efforts in nine ways:

Increase sales using fact-based selling tools.

Build profits by targeting profitable activities.
Increase customer loyalty and retain customers for life.
Increase the accuracy and timeliness of sales forecasts.
Achieve budgeted sales.
Increase the proportion of high-value customers in your customer
mix.
Reduce low-yield activities in the sales process.
Deploy higher-yield promotions and advertising.
Predict future behavior of prospects and customers.

In this article, Ill discuss items four, five, and six on the list (as seen in bold
above). My earlier article, "Business intelligence tools are key to building
profits," discussed the first three points, and I will cover the last three in an
upcoming piece.

Increase the accuracy and timeliness of sales forecasts

Information concerning future revenue answers the questions of what youre
going to sell, to whom youre going to sell it, and when you will make the
sale. When its accurate and timely, this information has immense business
value. The product side of your business benefits by knowing that red widgets,
for example, are outselling blue widgets in Florida, but blue leads two-to-one
in Ohio. Armed with such facts, youre able to increase sales by putting the
most attractive product in front of each customer. In addition, you can
increase profitability by optimizing procurements and distribution. On the
financial side, your CFO loves the reputation of credibility your organization
can gain with bankers and investors who view accurate forecasts as evidence
that youre running your business well.

Of course, the challenge lies in actually constructing the accurate forecast.

Particularly daunting is the required individual product and customer detail.
Most often, gathering this information is a brutal and unreliable process.

The following are the common issues most organizations face when building a
sales forecast:

When substantial facts are missing, forecasts are

developed subjectively using different standards. Sales reps are often
liberal, if not wildly optimistic, compared with managements conservative
posture. Either extreme is costly to the organization.
Sales momentum is crippled at budget time, as sales reps and managers
waste time dickering over figures when compiling their account-by-account
forecasts. All told, the preparation of sales forecasts can sideline a sales
rep for weeks each year.

The forecasting burden can be considerably eased and the reliability of the
forecast much improved when the right information is at hand to support the
underlying analysis. BI tools give decision makers ready access to information
that provides a detailed portrait of sales history. Easy and direct access to
historical sales information supports both forecast accuracy and better, faster
procurement and inventory decisions.

Achieve budgeted sales

Time and again, you find its late in the month and its apparent from the sales
team that there will be a problem hitting the numbers. You scramble to assess
both the magnitude and the source of the variance, and both you and the
sales team pose dozens of pressing questions in a last-minute charge to
recover. In this climate, most organizations face the following problems:
 Answering the pressing questions requires sales rep and management
time, shifting the focus away from productive sales activities. The valuable
sales time lost serves to further compound the problem.
Shortcomings are revealed too late in the sales cycle to stimulate sales
and recover the month.

Comprehending and acting upon accurate information early is whats key to

preempting unpleasant month-end surprises. Modern sales organizations
employ BI tools, which allow them access to a continuous feed of valuable
company information. In these organizations, managers and sales reps are
able to, at any point in time, quickly grasp the big picture, then instantly drill
down to identify particular areas of concern, such as individual products,
accounts, and/or sales regions or representatives. Armed with this sort of
intelligence, you can design and implement surgical microplans to address
each small problem area as it is uncovered. The result? Making small
corrections enable you to stay the course and make your month.

Increase the proportion of high-value customers in your customer mix

Your highest-value customers are dependable and low-maintenance. Most
importantly, month after month, they contribute a hefty volume of high-margin
sales. It makes sense to proactively seek prospective customers that have
similar attributes and to focus your customer acquisition efforts on adding
them to the fold. But many organizations have the following obstacles to
overcome to achieve this sales initiative:

Often, organizations do not have the relevant customer information on

which to build an accurate profile of their most-valued customers, which
prevents any attempt to target similar prospects.
Even if an organization does have the critical customer information, its
often not ordered in any useful manner. To truly reap the rewards of this
information, customer information must be organized by geography,
industry, volume of business, number of different products purchased, or
any number of other pertinent characteristics to be truly useful in targeting
high-value potential customers.

With a little imagination and a great information system, you can begin by
implementing simple measures to enable you to rank your current customers
according to their relative value to your organization. Initially, try ranking them
by profit contribution alone, then you can add more sophisticated factors later,
if you choose (timely payment, returns, complaints, etc.).

Once youve arranged customers from high to low value, you can do two
powerful things right off the bat. First, you can better target your customer-
acquisition initiatives by focusing your customer-acquisition efforts around the
attributes common to high-value customers. Second, you can begin to
engineer your overall customer mix by targeting high-value replacements for
low-value customers.

Conclusion
The rewards of having the right information organized in a useful manner are
many to the organizations that make the effort to attain these sales and
marketing goals. Most organizations either have or can get the necessary
data (garden-variety transactional type), but implementing the right BI tools
can allow organizations to utilize that data in new and more efficient ways.
The current crop of BI tools is both affordable and straightforward to
implement (although its always advisable to spend some time with a BI
specialist who has experience with BI solutions), and many organizations
realize a payback in just a few months time.

Using Business Intelligence to

Improve Sales and Marketing
Performance
The right customer data can help boost sales conversion rates and spur
top-line growth.
Customer intelligence has been a staple in the contact center for years, guiding CSRs down the path
toward higher upsell, cross-sell, and conversion rates. Traditionally, intelligence capabilities have
been built into CRM systems as a means of improving customer service. These solutions were
designed to gather vast amounts of data and make it available in a single, convenient location.

As this practice grew and analytics was added, these systems not only gathered the data from
broader sources, but also began to extrapolate meaning from it and doing a job that only the more
experienced representatives were capable of completing. It has been a boon to customer service
effectiveness (and frankly, customers have come to expect it), but as a sales tool, in this context it's
limited to a pool of existing customers.
The idea that valuable data can be collected, compiled, and acted on hasn't been lost on the savvy
sales and marketing types, though. The beauty of standalone "intelligence" solutions is that data sets
and sources can be customized to match changing needs and goals. Organizations stand to gain
immensely from information regarding who, how, and where their products are being used (location-
based marketing services like Groupon are great examples of companies that have done this well).
This information represents varying levels of demand for a particular product or service, and sales
and marketing strategies can be adapted accordingly to take advantage of potential revenue
opportunities.

While the success of business/customer intelligence essentially relies on "the wisdom of the
masses," the collective decision of any given group is a powerful thing that isn't taken lightly. It isn't a
stretch for companies to change an entire product line or feature set because of trends in usage
data.

In the software industry, for example, a support or customer service professional is able to determine
how an application has been used by the customer and whether or not the open ticket was a result
of user error or a software bug. In either case, support personnel can resolve the issue and close the
ticket while this information is fed to development teams to ensure that future updates or versions of
the program are better suited to the needs of its users-because happy customers are good
customers.

The interconnectivity of digital data systems today is largely what has allowed intelligence
technologies to make such a splash in the sales and marketing industries. Not only has it enabled
greater efficiencies through automation, but the breadth of data sets available to the analytics
engines is far greater than what any human being is capable of comprehending thanks to our
"online, all the time" mentality today.

These two attributes are the keys to success for business intelligence-especially in service, sales,
and marketing, where data sets are largely made up of customers and prospects. On a technical
level, every step in these functions is affected. Data is generated at touchpoints across all channels
(including self-service); stored electronically where it is instantly accessible at anytime; analyzed for
behavioral and attitudinal patterns; summarized for business rules engines; and fed to users as
situationally-relevant information and suggested courses of action with the highest probability of
eliciting a desired response. It's a staggering amount of work that is done automatically, and not just
for one contact but for thousands.

From a cost-saving perspective, automating these processes eliminates the time and labor that
otherwise would be involved with doing them manually. In terms of effectiveness, the likelihood of
human error tainting results during the process is all but eliminated. Going a step further, instead of
simply having accurate data we now have "intelligent" systems that can draw upon that data for
more meaningful-and successful-interactions on the front end, letting the user give their full attention
to the subject. In short, business intelligence is a win-win.

For the software industry, business intelligence offers a new level of actual usage data not
previously available. Consider the value in knowing, via user opt-in, precisely which features are
used most, which aren't used at all, as well as when trial downloads expire. Product marketing can
tailor the pipeline and enhancements specifically to meet actual usage, while sales is empowered
with actionable data to convert the trial user to a paying customer. That level of intelligence can have
just a great an impact on the bottom line.

I've seen customers achieve sales conversion rates upwards of 75 percent and top-line growth of 25
percent after empowering their employees with this kind of "intelligent" support. This of course
depends largely on the makeup of their organization and if they have the internal capability to take
action once the data is gleaned.

Business intelligence has come a long way since first emerging in the contact center. Its models and
capabilities continue to expand and accommodate new uses, industries, and sources. As marketing
moves more and more towards accountability within an organization, the need to back up all
decisions with data will become the norm. Marketing departments that arm themselves with
actionable data will be the ones best equipped to make decisions based largely on customer usage
and insight.

How are you using intelligence to make data-driven decisions?

5 Benefits of Business
Intelligence for Sales
Professionals
When it comes to understanding your products, pricing, and customers,
tracking sales data across all these variables can be the difference
between success and failure.

In the now hyper-competitive business world, sales data is often the key to
making your company stand out among other vendors fighting for the same
market share. The ability to track what customers are buying, what
products are trending down, and what stores or sales areas are struggling
provides actionable intelligence. You can use actionable intelligence to
better position your company for growth and prevent challenges before
they impact your bottom line.

When aggregated in a central location and referenced regularly, sales data

provides transparency into your companys performance. Business
intelligence software can provide a central location for all your data,
converting columns of spreadsheets into visual charts and graph you can
use to lead your team and make profitable decisions.
If your company is considering business intelligence for sales analytics and
reporting, consider the following five benefits as reasons to move forward:

1. Sell More to Existing Customers

Its no secret that it costs more to win a new customer than to retain an
existing one. One study suggests that the probability of selling to an
existing customer is up to 14 times higher than selling to a new customer.

Armed with business intelligence, your sales team will have a better
understanding of what your customers are buying, and perhaps more
importantly, what they are not. Tracking sales data by customer will reveal
demand trends and opportunities to cross-sell other products. If one of your
customers is buying administrative HR software, for example, but not
payroll service, you can create marketing campaigns targeting that specific
opportunity.

2. Provide Better Customer Service

As you track customer sales and analyze buying habits, you can create a
more complete picture of your customers business needs. With actionable
intelligence from your BI software, your sales team can walk into customer
meetings better prepared to respond to questions, discuss potential
opportunities for cost savings, introduce new products they can use to
increase sales, and review current stock levels to avoid inventory
challenges.

As you and your team learn more about your customers needs, you can
provide better service, strengthen relationships and earn loyalty.

3. Make Data-Driven Decisions

To keep pace with the market and keep competitors at bay, you need
unfettered access to current information about your business, and you
need to use this information to drive decisions. Emotional decisions or
initiatives based on intuition pose risks you can not afford to take.

With sales data broken down by customer, sales rep, or product, you can
approach performance reviews with insights that help each rep achieve
higher sales or mend broken customer relationships. With details about
historical product sales across various industries, you can make sure your
team is prepared for spikes in demand and ready to address any question.
These are just two examples of how you can make more data-driven
decisions. Having accurate and timely data at your fingertips will make it
easier to justify actions you take with your team and your customers.

4. A Single Source of Truth for Reporting

For many companies, data about customers, products and marketing
activity is likely stored in different systems spread across your business.
Sometimes, these disparate systems dont speak to each other, and data is
rarely shared in a productive, efficient manner.

Business intelligence software can serve as a single source of truth for all
relevant business data. BI can integrate with a variety of company systems
including enterprise resource planning (ERP), point-of-sale,
warehouse/supply chain management and customer relationship
management (CRM). This integration enables holistic data to be measured
through your business intelligence tool, which gives you a more complete
picture of your performance and a more transparent sales culture.

5. Support for Other Departments

Actionable intelligence benefits more than your sales team. The knowledge
about what products are selling (and to whom) can make other areas of
your business more efficient. Operations will be able to better plan and
forecast product demand, which means preparing manufacturing, product
development, and customer service for production schedules and staffing
needs.

Marketing will have the evidence they need to prove which campaigns are
driving sales and which ones need to be refined. Management will be able
to access executive dashboards with high-level details about sales activity,
which will help them make strategic decisions for the benefit of the
company and justify future investments in sales. Data from a single source
of truth will drive value between departments and across the enterprise.

***

Sales leaders need to monitor a smorgasbord of key performance

indicators, from individual and team performance to product sales,
inventory, and marketing campaigns. BI software helps you manage all of
these data points from one system and keep your analytics current.

You can approach every interaction with your sales team fully informed
about their customers and territories. You can communicate progress and
address concerns while empowering them with useful data, scorecards,
and comprehensive views of everything they should address with
customers. Sales is the engine that drives business growth, and
maximizing your teams effectiveness should be a top priority.

10 Ways Business Intelligence

Can Help Your Organization
by Sarah Schmidt, on February 15, 2016
 What is business intelligence, and why is it so
important now, given our current market environment? To explore this topic more deeply,
we asked thought leaders, executives, and consultants to share their insights. These
industry experts touch on a variety of compelling benefits that stretch across different
business functions from marketing to sales to customer service. Here are ten ways
business intelligence can enhance your organization and help decision makers make more
informed, effective choices.

1. Determine the ROI of your marketing strategy.

"In a market saturated with apps, social media platforms, analytics tools, and pay-per-click
campaigns, business intelligence is crucial in helping small businesses figure out if the
marketing strategy they've invested in is producing ROI (return on investment). Business
intelligence can translate into analytics reports where businesses can base decisions on
solid research, data, and facts, rather than intuition, assumption, or gut instinct. How do you
know something is working? Reports can tell you a much bigger story than you could
imagine."

Vicky Llerena, CEO of Social Vibes Media

2. Derive knowledge from a sea of data.

"Business intelligence today is more important than ever. Ninety percent of the data that
exists today the world over was created in the last two years alone. Going forward, the rate
of data creation is only going to accelerate. The chief reason for that is the explosion of
social media channels and the burgeoning number of users disseminating data at
breakneck speeds. What's the point of all that sea of data without an iota of insightful
information? Businesses are finding it a conundrum to decipher meaningful insights out of it
all. This is where business intelligence can chip in. It brings a method to the madness of all
that petabytes of data floating around. It is the art of deriving knowledge from all the
business processes to help enterprises gain a head start to better understand customer
needs and market dynamics. Improving performance, delivering on customer promises, and
building long-term customer relationships are some of the benefits of BI."

Someshwar Chidurala, Digital Marketing Analyst, Orchestrate Technologies, LLC

3. Understand what drives revenue for your business.

"While business intelligence can be a very broad term, to me it is knowing exactly what is
going to drive revenue for your business. To know that is to know who your end user is,
what influences their decisions, and how they consume their information. In todays
marketplace, there are thousands of outlets pushing information, and not everyone can
consume everything. Business intelligence is knowing where and how (media outlets and
through articles, videos, ads, podcast, etc.) your ideal customer consumes their information,
what is going to drive them to purchase and subscribe, and executing a plan to take
advantage of that knowledge."

Zachary Reed, Manager, Marketing and Communication, Triumph Bancorp

4. Personalize your sales strategy and anticipate objections.

"Business intelligence is understanding more about the other business you are trying to
work with in any capacity. Generally, sales teams research this information to be prepared
for objections specific to a companys situation. It's particularly useful to know if the
company you are trying to sell to is cutting budgets, having an increased personnel
turnover, showing decreased sales numbers, about to merge, or outsourcing with
competitors at lower prices. Outside of in-depth business intelligence, there are many other
things to look for in a company to evaluate its health. This research will be easier if the
company is publicly traded, if not, youre up to your own devices.

If youre part of a sales team, its a very good idea to do business research to personalize a
sales strategy, not only will you be more prepared for their objections, but you will appear
more genuine in understanding the obstacles this company will have to overcome to move
forward with the sale.

Your sales team should have a long checklist of things to look for, to see if a company is a
good candidate for a sale. The more things on the checklist that match up, the more
ammunition you have from your business intelligence you can use to help them understand
how great of a candidate they are."

Curtis Boyd, CEO/Founder, Future Solutions Media

5. Avoid bottlenecks and problems in a fragile market.

"Business intelligence is critical to both executives and owners equally as it provides
insights into the true health of an organization that are not readily available from a profit and
loss statement. There are a plethora of BI applications available on the market today that
integrate with your accounting software. The key is to understand which is best for your type
of business as each has its own pros/cons and features. Business intelligence is not just
about tracking KPIs (key performance indicators) once a month or quarter. BI includes
forecasting to avoid bottlenecks and provide perfect timing for decision making such as
purchasing or new hires. An easy-to-read dashboard that is reviewed weekly will help you
be more informed and avoid problems in a very fragile market.

Rick Armstrong, CPA and Founder, QB Pro Consulting, Inc.

6. Create a more effective business model.
"I just introduced business intelligence to the company where I currently work, and it has
helped us turn a growing business model with close to $10 million in annual sales on its
head. I drew up a different business model based on the BI I used from the company's own
data that they simply couldn't find and properly read.

Why is BI more important than ever? In one word: oversaturation. The internet and the
continued growth of e-commerce have saturated every market. You want clothing, furniture,
even food? There are dozens of options around the block or just a click away. For business
owners, this means making smart decisions and trying to know where to put your marketing
dollars and where to invest in infrastructure. Business intelligence lets you do that, and
without it, youre simply fumbling around for the light switch in the dark."

Jeremy Levi, Director of Marketing, MarsWellness.com

7. Get a single, consolidated view of your customers.

"Business intelligence is having access to all your business data, regardless of platform, in
a singular, unified dashboard. This can include customer data from your CRM system, email
marketing, and website engagements tracked in your data management platform, customer
interactions on user chat tools like Intercom.io all aggregated into a single holistic view of
the customer and their interactions with your business.

This is extremely important now as customers are interacting with a business across a
multitude of platforms and channels, including their website, social channels, live chat tools,
email, and also purchasing products both offline and online. Without a single consolidated
view of the customer, it would be difficult to know how to best address them, or meet their
needs.

Due to this platform fragmentation, business intelligence is not just important it is a

must."

Garrett Gan, Co-Founder & CEO, Thalamus, Inc

8. Track your inventory and capitalize on trends.

"Business intelligence or analytics has become critical in retail given the fast pace at which
consumers expect orders to be delivered to their doorsteps (the Amazon effect). Retailers
and brands need to know where their inventory is located and how well its selling. Analytics
provides this insight to buyers and executives so they can capitalize on buying trends."

Kay Rindels, Marketing, SPS Commerce

9. Build your brand in a competitive, complex retail environment.

"In the context of consumer packaged goods (CPG) marketing, good business intelligence
is the data that enables marketers to plan and react faster, and more efficiently, throughout
the decision-making process. This data allows insights professionals to find creative ways of
growing the business through initiatives like cross-promotion strategies with complementing
product categories.

Up until the early 1990s, all brands and retailers had to worry about were physical brick-
and-mortar stores or catalog sales where the orders were placed by snail mail or telephone.
With the advent of the internet and the emergence of numerous retail formats such as club
warehouses (e.g., Costco) and dollar stores (e.g., Family Dollar) the retail landscape has
evolved to include many more species of channels each competing for a greater share
of wallet from their own shopographical niche.

In this brave new world, only those brands with the best measurements will be able to gain
insight into human behavior that truly helps them build their brands."

C.J. Acosta, Marketing Manager, InfoScout

10. Discover the big-picture "why" and what motivates consumer behavior.
"The numbers that drive business intelligence as it stands today dont tell a complete story.
Thats because the way the executive suite sees the business is not exactly how customers
see the business, and social media snippets arent enough to fill the gap. To truly
understand and satisfy customers needs and correct problems, they must first understand
why a phenomenon is happening, rather than go with a gut feeling. Adding qualitative
analytics to their dashboard alongside the quantitative data can give them that big picture
because its adding the 'why' to the 'what.' Many think of hard numbers when theyre
formulating their business intelligence strategy, but those will only tell them what their
customers are doing, not what motivates them to do those things"

Adam Rossow, Partner, iModerate

How to Use Business Intelligence to

Increase Revenue
Business Intelligence systems offer limitless possibilities for promoting operational efficiency
but BI can also have a dramatic impact on revenue growth. It doesnt require a huge investment
in software but a well thought out strategy for getting information out of the data warehouse and
in front of decision makers. How exactly is this a catalyst for business growth? Here are two
ideas:

1. A single version of the truth delivered every single day. This means that every executive,
manager and their staff are looking at the same numbers every time they discuss the numbers.
Managers will implement their own spreadsheet and paper based systems to fill a reporting void
and to prove that what they are doing is working. However, as these systems evolve, they deviate
from the numbers from other divisions. The aggregated corporate financial figures become an
abstract construct irrelevant to day to day business activities. Worse, there are labour intensive
manual processes behind putting together these reports, meaning that the data is compiled and
analysed less often, the calculations are error prone and employees are distracted from higher
value activities.
A single version of the truth delivered daily, in BI parlance, is a set of numbers, condensed into
an easy to consume and visually appealing report, that represent the key metrics that are driving
the business. The figures will vary depending on the industry and management style, but
examples are bookings, goods delivered, revenue run-rate, cash burn, customers served, etc., for
a few different time periods (daily, month to date, year to date), perhaps also alongside the
variance from forecasted amounts. As the report is automatically generated and published, it can
be delivered every single day without incurring any incremental costs. This is not a dashboard
with hundreds of metrics, but a handful of key tables and graphs that can be viewed on a tablet or
smartphone, representing what really moves the business forward. Links can be provided to drill
down into further details if necessary, but that level of analysis is a separate activity. The daily
single version of the truth is simple enough to consume quickly and keeps the management team
focused on the key metrics that are on the path to achieving the primary business goals.
Benefits:

Everyone faces the truth of the same numbers, good or bad

Changes in the business environment become apparent to everyone sooner
Resources and dollars can be reallocated based on evidence of shifting conditions or
customer trends
Executives and managers can keep their fingers on the pulse of the business while
travelling (to visit customers, of course!)
Managers know which activities they need to focus on daily to actually make a difference
to the business

Potential pitfalls:

This demands executive sponsorship at the highest level

Not all corporate cultures can support this level of transparency
Regulatory or legal barriers might exist to disseminating the data, even within the
company
Requires a commitment to simplicity and resisting the temptation to over-engineer the BI
system

2. The best next sales prospects: who, what, where, how. This is sales figures analysis across
several dimensions: customers, geography, channel, SKU, etc. and looking for avenues for
revenue growth. There are two parts to the analysis. The first is knowing the customer data
better. This alone is powerful as the data has to be collected from many different systems.
Having a holistic view of the client base allows sales leaders to confirm their hunches and
develop a stronger intuition about the best sales prospects and where sales and marketing budgets
should be spent. It also makes it clear who are the most important customers to the business.
The second part of the analysis is to turn the numbers into action by making comparisons across
dimensions, identifying the gaps and asking questions. For example, if a product
is overwhelmingly popular in one country, then it what other similar countries is there
an opportunity to sell the same product? If sales are weak in a region, is it because a key
distributor has been ignored or just that no attention has every been paid to that market? At what
rate is the business winning orders from a quote or estimate? How does this vary by product,
region or type of customer? Where are the lagging distributors or sales reps located? Can we
hypothesize that they lagging because of underinvestment in sales support, a strong competitor,
or the pricing is wrong for that market? What are the common characteristics of geographies
where sales are growing? What products could be bundled together at minimal expense to deliver
greater value to the customer? Analysis and questioning the data will produce a sales and
business development strategy based on evidence, not anecdotes or hunches about what should
work.
There are many other scenarios where BI can assist in overcoming business challenges, but these
two stand out as directly related to growing revenue. Putting these ideas into practice does not
require bleeding edge software or complicated data science. It is simply using the data that you
have to make evidence based business decisions.
A good case study that touches on these points and a few others can be found in this case study
by Senturus.

3 Ways to Increase Profits with Business

Intelligence
Business Intelligence (BI), also called business analytics, is an important tool
for businesses looking to optimize profits. The software compiles data from
sources within your companys technology solution(s) and provides reports
and analytics to help you improve marketing strategy and business decisions.
Using BI gives you the data you need to improve your business and boost
your companys bottom line. There are three specific ways that business
intelligence can increase profits for your organization.

Focus Marketing Efforts to Increase Sales

Business intelligence gives you important insights into customer behavior so
you know where to change your marketing strategy to improve sales. For
example, if a product sells well at a certain time of day, you can opt to run
online advertising during that time to boost sales even more. Increasing sales
translates to bigger profits for your organization.
Reduce Costs to Improve Your Bottom Line
Business intelligence can show you where you may need to cut expenses.
Maybe your business offers a product or service that does not sell well. You
might consider eliminating it from your product lineup. You may also find a
lower price from a different vendor. By lessening your outgoing expenses, you
can boost your companys bottom line.

Eliminate Inefficiencies to Optimize Profits

Using Business intelligence software gives you instant access to all of
your companys data in one location. That results in increased productivity and
allows your employees to focus on the important tasks that contribute to your
bottom line. By eliminating time spent searching for data you decrease
inefficiencies that cost money, thereby optimizing your profits.

The Role of Business Intelligence in

Digital Marketing
It comes with no surprise that SEO and Social Media have become the cornerstones for
digital marketing campaign. With little investment and high ROI potential, they seem to
be an ideal option for spreading the awareness of a brand over the web and make the
most out of it. When you get your hands on SEO and social media, you may get a rough
idea of how your digital marketing campaign is running through basic analytics, but to
get a clear insight it is imperative to use more sophisticated Business Intelligence tools
to get a more informed perspective.
With the help of Business Intelligence, you can easily figure out which social media is
doing a great job for your business and which one is not. Not just this, by using BI you
can also find out which social post receives the highest attention in past few days,
weeks or month. Similarly, in SEO, business intelligence can help you track which blog
post of your website gets highest number of impressions, clicks and engagement. Also,
you can find out for which keywords your website gets good amount of traffic or in which
demographic the bounce rate of your website was least. So, there are ample ways in
which you can use business intelligence in SEO.

Business Intelligence for

Marketers Resource Guide
Business intelligence tools analyze massive amounts of information to provide important
insights into patterns that indicate the desires and attitudes of clients. Marketing teams can
capitalize on this information, organizing campaigns that more precisely target the right
audience, and gain a better understanding of which initiatives generate the greatest revenue.

Predictive and Prescriptive Analytics

Predictive analytics is the process of uncovering data that reveals future trends.
Marketers are always seeking actionable insights from their data, and the forecasts
produced by predictive analytics offer direct suggestions for future action. One major
way this is achieved is by providing information that can support the sales team.
Information about individual customers can inform their approach or even just inform
their automated email campaign and lead to increased revenue. Predictive analytics
tools can not only determine the best messaging for customers by reading into past
behavior, but they can also determine what products to market to which customers.

By helping marketers to understand customer behavior better, the marketer is able to be

proactive, and make a prognosis of their needs in advance. This drives revenue and
engages customers. An example is Amazons model: a customer comes to Amazon
from a link in an email and browses various pages for a few hours. Based on how the
customer arrived to the website, and what products the customer viewed, Amazon is
able to guess the desires of this customer with a great degree of accuracy. On the flip
side, if data reflects a disgruntled customer that does not open certain types of emails,
this BI tool will help the marketer know it in advance, so that they can shape their
messaging in a way that will not bore or scare the customer away.

Using data from the past, predictive analytics can prescribe precise ways for the
marketing department to improve consumer engagement and reach its target audience
with more valuable messaging.
 Marketing Technology Integration
Business intelligence tools can contribute significantly to a fully integrated marketing
approach. Customers are going to be using all available channels and resources to
research and discuss a product, and ultimately to make the decision of whether or not to
buy that product. Marketers must be sure they are, in turn, integrating data from all
available platforms to design ideal interactions.

Marketing technology integration is about conveying a unified message throughout a

customers entire experience with a brand: from email and social media to billboards
and in-store advertisements. This is important to marketers striving to make the entire
customer experience seamless.

This is achieved by integrating real-time customer behavior data into personalized

responses. Statistics show that 45% of American consumers plan to split their buying
between online and in-store purchases, underscoring the importance of this unified
approach. For example, one customer may download an app that is partnered to a
certain store. When the customer uses the app and checks in on Facebook at a location
near that store, he receives a discount to shop there. After making a purchase, he
receives an email with coupons and an invitation to discuss the brand on social media.
According to a 2011 Gartner survey, companies that use such event triggered
techniques have seen the response rates to their campaigns increase by 600%.

Integrated marketing technologies provide customers with consistent messaging across

platforms and can make a brand stick out in the mind of a customer, and ultimately be a
determining factor in a purchase.

Social Analytics
Social analytics tools gather information from user conversations and actions across
social media channels and the rest of the Web. It offers the marketing department
insight into the behavior and sometimes even the thought-processes of customers. The
field can be subdivided into two primary categories: web analytics, which examines
page browsing statistics, and social media analytics.

Web analytics offer marketers a comprehensive vision of who is visiting their site, how
they are getting there, and what they are most interested in. These tools can be used to
determine the success of certain areas of the site, in addition to the success of links and
other advertising in drawing traffic to the site. Statistics can also demonstrate which
page a user is on when they leave the site. This can inform the marketers decision-
making when it comes to the sites content and messaging.
Social media analytics mines information from posts, link shares, comments, and other
engagements on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, comments sections and more. This data
provides marketers with a unique window into the hearts and minds of consumers. This
can improve consumer engagement, as companies learn more about who their target
audience is and what they want. For example, in reacting to an episode of a TV show,
who were the users that mentioned the show the most? Why did they like the show or
why didnt they?

The most common actionable insight that is drawn from social media analytics is
campaign tracking: judging the performance of a given campaign, and determining the
factors that impact performance. Which outreach methods are working and which are
not? How does the messaging need to be changed so that the product stands out in
conversation from the competition? For example, social analytics could compare the
amount of social mentions of a TV show, versus how many people actually watched the
show.

Perhaps more than any other business intelligence tool, social analytics foster an
intimate understanding of a customers opinions. This is important not just for
engagement, but for monitoring performance and the strategic aims of a campaign.

Marketing KPIs
Marketers rely on key performance indicators, measurements of success in important
categories, to determine the most important influences on business performance. KPIs
monitor the efficiency of a marketing campaign through metrics such as Cost Per Lead
Acquisition. Determining the cost of each lead, where the most expensive leads came
from, and where the most valuable leads came from, can provide valuable insight into
best practices. It can also answer the question of how resources should be allocated.
For example, a company could host a very expensive tradeshow and only receive a few
leads. The Cost Per Lead Acquisition might then be very high. However, if those few
leads turned out to be major clients that increased revenue, marketers better
understand the value of that tradeshow.

KPIs can also help marketers determine if their content contains the right messaging. A
great way for digital marketers to measure this is by watching the Landing Page
Conversion Rates. This KPI gauges how successful a page of content is in getting
visitors to either fill out of a form or buy a product. By using this KPI to watch different
pages over time, marketers can discover which kind of content draws the most
conversions, whether they be leads or sales.

KPI analysis is not only an easy way to keep an eye on metrics that are vital to the
business, but it can also create connections for marketers between metrics. Certain
KPIs can serve as indirect indicators of other categories. By monitoring KPIs over time,
marketers can see which KPIs are related to customer satisfaction, increased revenue,
and the categories that matter the most to them.

Unifying Customer Data

Important data on customers can come from many places and from many different
campaigns; whether the information be handwritten on a comments card or filled out in
an online registration form, it is most valuable when it is all gathered together and used
to inform marketing decisions. Customer data unification is important to marketers for a
simple reason: the more accurate data the company has, the better they are going to be
able to engage the customer. Without unified data, marketers might be communicating
inaccurate, out of date, or distasteful messaging to customers. In the very least, they
wont be taking maximizing the value of big data.

Business intelligence tools like data warehouses can draw together data from multiple
places and organize it in a single format. This unified view provides insight not just to
the customer but to the place where it came from. Marketers can tell which kind of
customers engage them where. Ultimately it can result in another form of campaign
performance: which method is working best? Whether that means Facebook over
Twitter, or direct mail over email, unifying data from across channels provides marketers
with meaningful insights.

Marketing analytics: The

role of Business Intelligence
in social media marketing
11 July, 2016
POSTED BY: LACH JAMES

Written by Yellowfin Co-Founder and CEO, Glen Rabie

Use of social media has exploded in recent years. It has quickly invaded almost every aspect of
our lives to the point that we wonder how we ever managed without it. Business use of social
media is also growing rapidly, as sales, marketing and communications departments and
enterprises clamber to better segment, target and interact with customers.
Social media provides a wealth of information that marketers can use to understand their target
audiences behaviours and preferences. But, it is also a tumultuous hubbub of thoughts and
opinions. Therefore, to arrive at any reliable, quantifiable or generalizable conclusions requires
the capture of vast amounts of data, which then need to be analyzed and visualized.

Here, Yellowfin Co-Founder and CEO, Glen Rabie, looks at how Business Intelligence
software can help marketing departments harness these social platforms as new avenues to
market.

The original version of this article was published on bandt.com.au and can be accessed HERE >

Marketing: An increasingly data-driven industry

Its an inescapable truth that marketing is becoming an increasingly data-driven industry. With
many marketing tools as well as both consumer and business audiences existing online,
everything is more measurable. Marketing as an industry is moving swiftly away from the
shadowy arts of gut feel towards evidence-based spending. Most aspects of modern marketing
can be tracked and analyzed from click-through rates on banner ads, to SEM marketing and
PPC campaigns, the open rates of eDMs, tracking the movements of prospective clients around
websites, monitoring visitor interaction with downloadable content, or social media engagement
and reach. Big Brother is truly watching.

However, rather than be daunted by this new status quo, marketers should view the movement
towards measurement as an opportunity to hone their skills, perfect their campaigns and prove
their worth. Data aggregation and analysis should always be treated as an ally and impartial
guide.

Marketing analytics for social media

Social media marketing provides perhaps one of the best sources of real-time marketing and
target audience feedback, offering a great way for companies to interact with customers,
understand their preferences and gain direct response. But, while social media platforms produce
a large amount of data, how can marketers collect, collate, analyze and act on that information in
order to derive valuable insights and drive smarter decision-making?

Business Intelligence (BI) solutions which deliver API connectors for third-party Web
applications offer marketers the capability to analyze data captured and generated by popular
social media platforms, such as Twitter, LinkedIn or YouTube. This analysis provides a quick
and cost-effective way of understanding the impact of social media marketing activities.
Proving ROI
Whats more, BI software with such capabilities can be an incredibly useful way for time-
pressed marketers to demonstrate the ROI of their social media campaigns. Furthermore,
integrating such data with other data sources and types, within a BI platform, can also assist
marketers to understand the relative value of social media activities compared to other tactics and
campaigns.

Using BI in social media marketing can also help improve resource management, increase
conversion rates and predict future trends and issues. Social media is an ever-changing
environment that needs a reactive and flexible marketing strategy cemented by data-based
insights.

By enabling users to automatically connect to third-party Web applications and analyze the data
produced, BI software is empowering marketers to gain a holistic view of multiple social media
platforms. In turn, this ensures quick and reliable decisions can be made based on myriad of data
sources.

Point and click technology

But, while marketing as a profession is becoming increasingly technology driven, that doesnt
mean most marketers possess the technical know-how of a professional data analyst.

For example, a marketing manager doesnt want to have to construct a new chart
or dashboard within their BI solution in order to track the performance of the company YouTube
channel. Its for precisely this reason that Yellowfins development focus has been on the
delivery of pre-built charts and dashboards, which provide the typical views of data that most
marketing specialists seek. Thats why Yellowfin 7.2 ships with a range of API connectors out-
of-the-box, including pre-built reports and dashboards, for applications such as LinkedIn,
Twitter, YouTube and more.

Because the predominant social media platforms have accessible APIs, plugging in is
straightforward and becomes a matter of point and click. This approach means our marketing
customers have all their social media metrics in one place, negating the need to chop and
change between separate and often very limited analytics plugins, developed only for one
social channel or another. Out-of-the-box connectors, accompanied by pre-built charts, enable
marketers to avoid the IT queue and enjoy a near instantaneous understanding of their social
media performance. But, more than that, it also empowers marketers to assess, or even combine,
data from multiple social media platforms alongside other relevant marketing metrics in order to
gain a complete, comparative and contextualized view across different marketing activities.
The democratization of data
A few years ago, this kind of comprehensive data analytics was reserved for corporate giants and
heavily guarded by the IT department due to technical inaccessibility, cultural rigidity and sheer
cost. However, were now seeing the democratization of data, and increasing demand for BI
software, throughout the enterprise and from much smaller businesses including those without
specialist IT departments.