Has Business Intelligence Failed? You Betcha! But, It Doesn’t Have to be That Way!

Business Intelligence

The business intelligence (BI) solution market has expanded and deepened, with new products, features and modules added every month. Some solutions are cumbersome, expensive and time-consuming to implement and adopt. Other solutions are browser-based, intuitive and flexible. Some BI tools are easy to learn, and practical and affordable to implement with great ROI and TCO. But, when a business is considering a business intelligence solution or if a business wants to migrate to or upgrade from another BI system, how can the management team determine the efficacy, efficiency and practicality of that solution without spending significant time and resources?The fact is that business intelligence solutions may have sophisticated features, but those features may be inaccessible to the average user or may require that users modify how they work to suit the process and flow of the system. The solution may be difficult to integrate, thereby disallowing data from other enterprise sources like ERP, CRM, SCM systems, HR solutions, legacy systems, or other disparate data sources. A BI solution might not support flexible reporting or allow for quick and easy customization to meet new needs.

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Hand-in-Hand To Business Success: Data Democratization and BI

Business Intelligence

Like every other type of business application today, Business Intelligence solutions must be mobile in order to meet the demands of the user base. Every business must recognize the reality of the mobile society in which we live and, whether they want to attract consumers and customers or provide business applications that satisfy the needs of employees, mobile access is critical for every user and critical to business success. But, the democratization of business intelligence is a broader, systemic issue that goes far beyond mobility.

Whether inside or outside the office, every individual contributor, team member, manager, executive, IT professional, HR, sales, marketing, production coordinator, and financial analyst needs business intelligence. We can’t empower our team members or hold them accountable for results without giving them the tools and information they need to do their jobs and to know whether their efforts are succeeding and contributing to the strategic, operational and tactical goals and objectives of the company.

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Love Sales Conversion and Numbered Lists? This Article is For You!

BI-Tool-for-Sales-Distribution-Marketing

People love numbered lists! The internet is chock full of articles, blogs and forums regaling us with numbered lists of important business factors and ways to beat the competition. With titles like, ‘The Five Best Ways to Attract New Customers’, ‘The Ten Most Important Things a Business Manager Should Know’, the lists are apparently endless.

Either you love these lists or you hate them. Either you think you have seen enough and you have it all down, or you are overwhelmed by all of the ‘most important’, ‘critical’, ‘can’t miss’ factors and considerations. No matter how you feel about this type of advice, you may want to consider this particular list – especially if you are a sales or marketing professional or a business owner or manager who wants to create, market and sell products or services and stay ahead of the competition and of customer expectations.

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Nuts to Site Traffic! BI, KPIs and SMM Give You the Power of Conversion!

KPI

I’ll just come right out and say it! All key performance indicators (KPIs) that are meant to drive performance (and all KPIs should do just that) must be linked to goal conversion. If they are not, then your metrics are meaningless or you are measuring the wrong thing! Whether you are talking about a click-through-rate (CTR), or unique visitors or the number of followers or time spent on a page or site, it all boils down to conversion goals.

If you are attracting followers who do not buy your type of product or service, if your followers are not in the right demographic profile or geographic location, if they are not ready to buy, your business will not achieve conversion. If you have unique visitors who visit your page or site because of incorrect keyword combinations, their visits will not result in conversion. If you have misleading content or unappealing or poorly presented content or you have chosen the wrong demographic or geographic targets for your products or services, it doesn’t matter how many ‘clicks’ you get – you will not get conversions.

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What’s the Buzz? Social Media and Business Intelligence Do Mix!

Social Media and Business Intelligence Do Mix

Many organizations are struggling to find meaning in the social media market and to determine the value of social media marketing to customers. In fact, the enterprise that utilizes a business intelligence (BI) solution to slice and dice unstructured data from social network conversations, comments and activities can glean a lot of insight and make better business decisions regarding how and when to market to social media customers and to determine the success of its integrated internet marketing campaigns.With the right BI tool, any enterprise can use time series-based historic data, and sort, filter and drill down and through data using demographics, geographies, and customer preferences and buying behaviors and it can forecast and predict future trends, needs and moods of customers.

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