Hoe kunt u als klein bedrijf gebruik maken van business intelligence?

Stelt u zich voor dat u geblinddoekt een pen moet zoeken zonder enige hulp of idee waar deze zou kunnen liggen. Dat is min of meer wat u doet wanneer u voor uw bedrijf geen gebruik maakt van data en analyses.

Het belang van business intelligence

Veel kleine bedrijven tasten vaak nog in het duister wanneer het gaat om business intelligence en het efficiënt verkrijgen, analyseren en gebruiken van data. Zij denken vaak dat dit alleen weggelegd is voor grote bedrijven met enorme budgetten. Dit is jammer, omdat zij hierdoor de vele voordelen van business intelligence mislopen! Het gaat hierbij onder andere om de volgende voordelen:

• Het stelt u in staat betere bedrijfsbeslissingen te maken gebaseerd op duidelijke informatie i.p.v. een onderbuikgevoel
• Business intelligence geeft u een duidelijk overzicht van uw bedrijf, zodat u direct inzicht krijgt in sterke punten van uw organisatie en de knelpunten.
• Met business intelligence kunt u een beter idee krijgen in het gedrag van (potentiële) klanten en patronen hierin. Met deze informatie kunt u zorgen voor meer tevreden klanten.
• Business intelligence helpt uw werknemers effectiever te werk te gaan en dus de productiviteit te verbeteren. Hierdoor blijft uw bedrijf competitief!
• Haal meer omzet en verlaag uw kosten door middel van een beter inzicht in de sales- en bedrijfsprocessen.

Samengevat zorgt business intelligence dus voor meer omzet, lagere kosten, tevredenere klanten en blijer, effectiever personeel. Redenen genoeg om serieus na te denken over het inzetten van meer data, analytics en business intelligence.

Waar begint u?

Ik hoor u denken “Heel leuk en aardig, maar hoe begin ik met het inzetten van business intelligence?”.

Ten eerste is het belangrijk om één duidelijk doel te stellen voor uw organisatie met de daarbij behorende KPIs (key performance indicators) die voor u relevant zijn. Gezien de veelzijdigheid van business intelligence kan het verleidelijk zijn om dit op alle vlakken van uw bedrijf te implementeren om zo alle hierboven genoemde voordelen te behalen. Dit is een beginnersfout vanwege de complexiteit van business intelligence. U kunt het beste met één specifiek onderdeel beginnen en uitbreiden zodra dat proces goed verloopt.

Als bedrijf heeft u de volgende 3 dingen nodig:

• Uitstekende databronnen
• Een business intelligence systeem
• Menselijke kennis

Allereerst is het belangrijk dat u de juiste data verzamelt. Denk hierbij aan website data van Google Analytics, financiële overzichten vanuit uw boekhoudsysteem, klantinformatie vanuit het CRM, marketing en sales informatie of een database van uw bedrijf. Zonder betrouwbare data heeft business intelligence geen zin.

Welk business intelligence systeem past bij u?

Afhankelijk van uw bedrijf en capaciteiten zijn er enkele mogelijkheden beschikbaar. Indien u het budget en de mensen heeft kunt u het hele business intelligence proces in-house regelen. Dit is vooral weggelegd voor middelgrote tot grote bedrijven.

Voor kleinere tot middelgrote bedrijven moet u over het algemeen kijken naar een SaaS (Software as a Service) oplossing. Deze zijn gemaakt met het oog op een simpele integratie met uw databronnen. Deze tools maken het vaak sneller, makkelijker en goedkoper om inzicht te krijgen in uw bedrijf. Ze zijn vaak minder flexibel en robuust dan een eigen oplossing, maar voor de meeste bedrijven hebben ze meer dan genoeg functionaliteiten.

Enkele toonaangevende services op het gebied van business intelligence zijn Tableau, Cluvio en de Google Data Studio. Hoogstwaarschijnlijk biedt een van deze services alles wat voor uw bedrijf van belang is.

De menselijke factor van business intelligence

De platformen hierboven maken business intelligence aanzienlijk makkelijker, maar een specialist op dit gebied blijft noodzakelijk. Indien er binnen uw bedrijf ruimte is voor groei, dan is het wellicht een goed idee om iemand op te leiden tot Business Intelligence professional. Dit kunt u onder andere doen door iemand te laten deelnemen aan de schriftelijke cursus Business Intelligence Professional.

Een andere training die wij ten zeerste aanraden op het gebied van business intelligence is Data Science & Business Analytics. Met deze training leert u of een van uw collega’s om complexe data te interpreteren en deze te vertalen naar nieuwe ideeën en innovaties. Door deze kennis in huis te halen zorgt u ervoor dat uw bedrijf de concurrentie een stap voor kan blijven door slimmer te werk te gaan en betere beslissingen te maken.

Bron: IMF Academy

How to Find the Most Suitable Metrics for your Dashboard

Since 1770 when Britain’s James Hargreaves patented his spinning jenny that allowed a single spinster to run eight spindles and produce eight times as much raw thread and yarn as before – cutting both time to market and labor expense involved with producing textiles in Blackburn, Lancashire – doing more with less has been the driving force behind growing a business.

This productivity remains an elemental economic force – with a decisive effect on profit.

In our modern economy, software applications measure linear-feet equivalents of today’s “thread and yarn.” Such raw, furnished data, unlike cotton or wool fibers, begs translation, comparison, and analysis. Consequently, every team lead needs an agent by which to see, interpret and act on that data.

The Dashboard – 3 Types for Business

And that’s what dashboards – imperative to business intelligence software – do. Of course, dicing and splicing that data constitutes a need for tailored dashboards, of which three types are recognized:

• Strategic – aggregates critical, overarching metrics, presenting a 10,000-foot view of a business.
• Analytic – gathers and compares particular metrics across time and many variables, drilling down to actionable data per team.
• Operational – monitors data in real time, alerting a team to any issues that need to be addressed.

Regardless of a dashboard’s purpose, it should reflect a company’s particular needs and culture, displaying Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) based on a firm’s high-level (and/or low-level) objectives. These KPIs will stand as quantifiable measurements of each goal; metrics, by any other definition.

That’s important, because according to Sruthi Varanasi of ReportGarden, “A metric is a quantifiable measure that is used to track and assess the status of a specific business process.”

Metrics – Lifeblood for a business; Heart of a Dashboard

Suffice to say, metrics are the truest barometer of how your online business is doing.

Consider this: A 15 percent increase in conversions is just that, a successful trend. Subsequently, metrics serve as buoys that can keep your business sailing in deep water or warn you when shoals are near. A 21 percent dip in visibility over a month is just that, a falling trend, indicating you might need to revisit strategy and adjust – on the fly.

It stands to reason, then, that constructing a clean, uncluttered, incisive dashboard that represents key business intelligence metrics is equal parts science and art.

You want a dashboard whose widgets illustrate – at a glance – essential data from which sound business decisions can be made – whether those decisions concern the content of a webpage or the features of an actual product.

Dashboard enABLEd! How to Determine Which Metrics to Track

So, how do you decide which specific metrics should populate that dashboard from which you will extract actionable data? How do you identify those KPIs for each business goal? Following these four steps will enABLE you (apology for the acronym within the acronym) to populate your dashboard with meaningful data:

1. Apply S.M.A.R.T. methodology.
2. Bring the selection to the team.
3. Limit KPI assignment to three primary, overriding goals.
4. Eliminate the urge to add more metrics to the dashboard.

1. Apply S.M.A.R.T. to each KPI

For a basic example, if an overriding goal is to increase monthly recurring revenue (MRR), the questions to ask – and answer (more than yes/no) – to assess the validity of a KPI begin with:

• Is a metric Specific to a goal? What needs to be accomplished and why?
  We want to increase MRR to increase margins and subsidize a new product launch next year.
• Is it Measurable? What kind of historical change has been evident? How will we know the goal was reached?
  According to historical analytics, we can feel confident that an MRR increase of between 3 – 5 % would be achievable.
• Is it Attainable? Are the resources readily available to achieve success? Is the goal reasonable? Is it likely to bring success?
  We can ramp up social media promotion, launch a campaign, or otherwise put effort behind ramping up sales to drive revenue.
• Is it Relevant? How meaningful and worthwhile is the goal? In the current situation can we commit to its achievement?
  Our competition has lost revenue, so more of the market is available to us. The more revenue generated, the more reward for us.
• Is it Timely? Is the goal ahead of the curve, or behind? What’s the deadline for achieving it? What’s the overall timeline set for adopting the goal?
  After strategic planning, we can achieve a substantive bump in MRR over the subsequent quarter.

So, your team devises this KPI: Increase MRR by 3% during Q2. What metric goes on the Dashboard? A monthly monitor of incoming revenue.

2. Bring KPI selection process to the team

Gain consensus on those metrics paramount to the team’s and the company’s success. Asking for a collective viewpoint not only helps distill the essence of paramount KPIs but also builds morale. Each team member gets some skin in the game.

3. Limit KPI assignation to no more than three primary goals

Segment’s Analytics Academy declares the purpose behind each solitary metric populating your dashboard should focus attention on a specific business process (goal!) that needs to be optimized. Using the sample KPI above, it could be one of three under an overarching goal to drive an increase of MRR.

4. Eliminate unnecessary metrics

The rule of thumb is to have no more than seven metrics displayed on any single dashboard because, after all, it functions as a quick-glance representation of a goal’s status. Thus, its design should advance easy comprehension, simple updating, and clean navigation without secondary data distractions.

Your team should make hard decisions on which metrics to include. Consider: secondary data get in the way, conflating interpretation, overwhelming the reviewer. Fewer metrics are better metrics.

Each time you visit the dashboard, you should remember that KPIs keep your business strategy agile, fleet, responsive. Positive data dictates stability and steadiness. Negative data compels your team to adjust, adapt and provide alternatives.

An effective dashboard illustrates this crucial data and discloses a course of action to take.

Metrics on Dashboard: What Are My Choices?

Once you’ve followed the ABLE steps to determine your KPIs, you’re ready to populate your dashboard. At this point, you may ask, “What are metrics that achieve near-universal adoption by businesses?”

That depends on the purpose behind your team, the audience (your team? An executive?) that will be reviewing the dashboard, the “actionability” of the selected KPIs, and the type of visuals preferred.

Metrics for a marketing team might include tracking web traffic sources, incremental sales, social sentiment, conversion rate, and SEO keyword ranking. A sales team might want to monitor sales growth, product performance, average purchase value, and average profit margin.

A financial team can follow working capital, debt-to-equity ratio, and current ratio. An e-commerce team might monitor customer lifetime value (CLV), customer retention rate, customer churn analysis, and monthly recurring revenue.

Other salient KPIs can address net profit, revenue growth rate, project schedule variance (PSV), and average revenue per customer. Because your KPI choices are ultimately subjective, the A.B.L.E. methodology can help your team judiciously arrive at which data would be most constructive to track and display.

Vital Metrics on (Dash)Board: The Skinny

As long as any KPI on your dashboard is based in company goals, is relevant to the team behind achieving that goal, is attainable, measurable and remains timely, the dashboard itself should render keen data from which you can take incisive action to engineer successes — as well as avert disasters.

Taking the time to apply the SMART methodology, bring in the team, limit primary goals and amount of KPIs assigned to each, and eliminate the urge to overpopulate a dashboard with secondary data, will help you select the most meaningful metrics for your business onto your dashboard.

Perform these steps. Pick your metrics. Build your dashboard. Mine your data.

Grow your business.

Author: Keith Craig

Source: Sisense

Launched a new product? This will help you measure its success

According to Harvard Business School, of the approximately 30,000 new products launched each year, about 95% fail. Of course, the product failure rate varies from one industry to another—for example, grocery products fail at a rate of 70-80%—but think about it: When you launch a new product, generally, your odds of success are 25 to 1. If casinos offered those kinds of odds, they'd go out of business overnight.

So, why do so many new products fail, and how can you measure product success?

Why do product launches fail?

New products fail for a variety of reasons, but the number one reason, according to Harvard Business Review (HBR), is that companies become so engrossed in the nuances of design that they don't adequately prepare to go to market:

"Numerous factors can cause new products to fail…The biggest problem we've encountered is lack of preparation: Companies are so focused on designing and manufacturing new products that they postpone the hard work of getting ready to market them until too late in the game."

Of course, the failure to leverage effective marketing strategies isn't the only boondoggle that condemns so many new products to the ash heap of history. According to The Business Journals, there are others, including the following three:

1. Not adequately defining a target audience for the product.

Many businesses fail to define the customers most likely to buy their products. Doing so means scrupulous targeting, effective market segmentation, and the creation of detailed buyer personas.

2. Not fine-tuning value propositions.

Every business worth its salt has a value proposition, but that promise made to consumers should vary somewhat based on the target audience for your product. For example, a product-based value proposition should demonstrate how a new product is superior to similar products offered by the competition.

3. Not establishing relevant, realistic, and measurable key performance indicators (KPIs).

This is perhaps the most harmful of product launch mistakes. To increase their odds of success, businesses need to enumerate clear, realistic, and measurable goals for things like revenue, price point, the number of total sales needed to meet revenue goals, number of needed prospects, leads and conversions, and the number of sales expected from new vs. repeat customers.

What key performance indicators (KPIs) should you use to measure product launch success?

Every business — and every product — is different, which means the product marketing metrics you use to measure the success of a launch will likely be different from those another company in another industry. That said, some KPIs are applicable to virtually every product launch, such as:

• Launch campaign metrics
• Product adoption metrics
• Market impact metrics
• Qualitative feedback

Let’s take a closer look at these KPIs and how you can leverage them to guarantee product launch success.

Launch Campaign Metrics

You can't expect a successful product launch without a smart marketing strategy. Marketing metrics will tell you how effective your launch campaign is, which strategies are most effective, and which need to be tweaked or eliminated.

Which metrics are most important to you during a new product launch?

While the exact campaign metrics you track will depend on your larger product marketing strategy, here are the most common launch metrics to track:

1. Leads generated: Generating leads as part of your product launch campaign is the first step in generating interest in your new product. Leads could be trials started, demos requested, or even thought leadership content downloaded that’s related to the new product.
2. Promotional channel metrics (email, advertising): Chances are, channels like email marketing and advertising will be central to your lead generation efforts. Measure your email open rate, as well as click through rates, to measure your effectiveness in positioning your new product as part of your overall promotion strategy. If you’re using online product advertising to promote your launch, look at the costs and click through rates to measure, once again, your effectiveness at positioning and promoting this new product.
3. Website traffic / page views: Be sure to measure views of all of your launch content as well, which includes website traffic or page views to new product pages, landing pages, and related content.
4. News coverage: For major launches, you may also want to target PR coverage for your new release. Measure the quantity and quality of these articles or mentions to gauge your effectiveness at getting coverage.

Product Adoption Metrics

Once you’ve launched your product, it’s time to focus your attention on how your product is resonating with your customers. Product adoption KPIs tell you whether you have been successful in releasing and marketing a product that serves a market need —ultimately serving revenue and related business goals.

What are product adoption metrics?

Think of tracking product adoption metrics as taking a glimpse into the mind of your customers and prospects. If they are quick to flock to your newly launched product, use these KPIs to keep up momentum and steer continued interest in your product. If your product adoption rates aren’t yet where you expected them to be, use these KPIs as goals to aim for as you continue marketing your product launch.

Here are a few typical product adoption metrics to track:

1. Product trials: Trials started by customers or prospects, if you’re offering this option, is a great metric for evaluating real interest in what you’ve launched. This is also a good first step in getting long-term product adoption.
2. Customer usage: Setting and tracking goals around customer usage over time - not just customers trying the product but also continuing to use the product over a set timeframe - is a good measure of your product serving a customer need and your marketing effectively guiding them into that product.
3. User retention: While the primary goal of your launch may be to generate awareness and interest in your new product, it is also important to retain those users to ultimately impact key business metrics like revenue.

Market Impact Metrics

In a competitive landscape, measuring your penetration into the market and the impact on your sales is key for measuring the success of your launch.

How do you measure market impact?

By measuring the market impact of their product, businesses are able to assess the achievement of their launch across product, marketing, and sales. Key market impact metrics to track include:

1. Revenue: If you are charging for this new product separately, revenue will be a critical KPI to measure the success and impact of your latest product launch. This is how customers show you that you have truly delivered value with your new product release.
2. Market share: Odds are there are many products like yours in the market. It's important to know what portion of the market for that product your business is capturing. The market share KPI, in other words, tells you how well your product is performing compared to your top competitors.
3. Competitive win rate: Another measure of your success in overcoming competitors in the market is your competitive win rate. If your new product competes head-to-head with existing solutions in the market, your competitive win rate should increase with a successful launch.

Qualitative Feedback

Finally, not all product launch KPIs can be quantitative in nature. You can also complement each of these other metrics with qualitative feedback from internal and external audiences.

How do you evaluate qualitative feedback?

Measuring qualitative feedback is like taking a temperature check of your customers and prospects. How are they feeling about your product launch? How are they communicating these feelings to your business? By tapping into the qualitative feedback generated by their product launch, businesses can develop a holistic understanding of their degree of product launch success.

Qualitative feedback metrics to track include:

1. Internal feedback: Collect feedback from internal audiences, including sales reps, marketers, executives, and product managers. Be sure to get their desired outcomes before the launch to better prepare to meet their objectives.
2. External feedback: Collect feedback from customers and prospects to get reactions and constructive notes about the positioning, channels, and other launch elements. You may even discover areas where you can follow up to maintain momentum post-launch, such as creating additional customer help documentation or marketing content.

Admittedly, launching a new product — and choosing the best metrics to determine whether that launch is successful — can be challenging. The high failure rate for product launches noted above is proof of that. However, by setting clear goals around these KPIs, aligning your product and marketing teams around these objectives, and ultimately measuring performance against these metrics will keep your entire company marching towards an effective product launch. 

Author: Madison Blask

Source: Crayon

Maximizing the value obtained from competitive intel

Now more than ever, companies are growing their revenue by tracking, analyzing, and acting on their competitors’ movements.

This raises an important question: How?

If you were to look at all the companies that are yielding returns on their competitive intelligence investments, what commonalities would you observe?

Two obvious commonalities come to mind: big teams and big budgets. Compared to companies with small CI teams (2-5 people), those with large CI teams (11+ people) are 31% more likely to report direct revenue impact as a result of competitive intelligence.

And compared to companies with CI budgets in the $25,001-$100,000 range, those with CI budgets in the $500,001-$1M range are 22% more likely to report direct revenue impact.

Interesting? Sure. Actionable? Not quite. Sadly, neither headcount nor budget is magically falling out of the sky any time soon. But here’s the good news: Amongst companies yielding returns on their CI investments, big teams and big budgets are far from the only commonalities.

After carefully reviewing the data, we’ve compiled a list of five steps you and your colleagues can take to get more value out of competitive intelligence. To be clear, this is not a list of silver bullets; we are not suggesting that these action items will yield the same magnitude of impact as, say, a 400% increase in budget.

Here’s what we are suggesting: Even with no additional budget and no additional headcount, you have the power to level up your CI program. It’s a matter of executing the right tactics.

Without further ado, here are five data-backed ways to get more value out of CI.

1. Establish KPIs

Trying to optimize your CI process without key performance indicators (KPIs) is like trying to do a cross-country road trip without Google Maps. You might luck into a correct turn every now and then, but at the end of the day, you’re shooting yourself in the foot.

KPIs are essential because they enable you to determine which decisions are successful and which ones are not. Let’s say you’re about to launch some kind of competitive initiative with the primary objective of helping your sales team win more deals. Without any way to measure the change in your win rates, you’ll have no idea whether your initiative was effective.

You can’t level up your CI program unless you consistently make good decisions, and you can’t consistently make good decisions unless you establish KPIs.

Here’s the data to back it up: Compared to companies without competitive intelligence KPIs, companies with KPIs are four times more likely to report direct revenue impact as a result of CI.

And if you’re wondering which KPIs to use, think in terms of specific goals. If you’re trying to win more deals, you should measure win rates. If you’re trying to build a better product, you should measure retention and ARR. The list goes on and on.

2. Establish quantitative KPIs

KPI is a pretty broad term — we should be more specific. Whereas a qualitative KPI is based on subjective inputs, a quantitative KPI is based on numbers.

Sales team confidence (via survey) is an example of a qualitative KPI. You could share statistics based on the survey responses — e.g., 18% of our sales reps say they feel “very confident” — but the responses themselves are inherently subjective.

Win rate, on the other hand, is a quantitative KPI. If your win rate increases by 11% YoY, that’s an objective measure of the impact you’ve made.

KPIs in general are powerful, but quantitative KPIs in particular are extraordinarily powerful.

Intuitively, this makes sense. Let’s say it’s been three months since you refreshed your sales reps’ email templates in order to better leverage competitive intel. Which of the following insights would be a more convincing indicator of success?

• Sales team confidence is up 16%.
• Our win rate against Competitor XYZ is up 28%.

Although the former is a nice soundbite, the latter is the superior insight — an unambiguous sign that your email initiative has been effective.

Again, we’ve got the data to back it up. Compared to companies using qualitative KPIs, companies using quantitative KPIs are 13% more likely to report direct revenue impact as a result of CI.

3. Drive battlecard adoption

While we’re on the topic of sales enablement, let’s take a moment to focus on battlecards.

As you probably know, a battlecard is a piece of content designed to make it easier for your sales reps to position your solution against that of a competitor. For obvious reasons, the battlecard is one of the most common outputs of the competitive intelligence process.

Unfortunately — and for a number of reasons — it’s not a guarantee that each of your reps will automatically adopt a new (or refreshed) battlecard as soon as it’s published. If, in other words, you don’t proactively take steps to drive battlecard adoption, there’s a chance your competitive insights will be put to use far less often than they should be.

And if you’re thinking the consequences of weak battlecard adoption are marginal, you’ve got another thing coming: Compared to companies that are unhappy with current levels of battlecard adoption, companies with strong adoption are more than twice as likely to report direct revenue impact as a result of CI.

Pro tip: One surefire way to improve battlecard adoption is to set aside time with your reps for in-depth, highly tactical training sessions.

4. Share CI on a weekly (if not daily) basis

We opened this blog post with the assertion that, now more than ever, companies are growing their revenue by tracking, analyzing, and acting on their competitors’ movements.

We’ve emphasized the final phase of the process — activation — for a reason: It’s absolutely critical, and yet it’s not always executed to the extent that’s necessary for satisfactory ROI. It sounds painfully obvious, but it needs to be said: Failure to act on competitive intelligence renders useless all the time you spend on research and analysis (dozens of hours per week).

Of course, those who gather and analyze competitive intel are far from the only ones who act on it. Across the average B2B organization, everyone from sales and marketing to product and CS is a stakeholder in the CI process. Getting these stakeholders to take action is a key step towards succeeding with CI.

Catalyzing action across your company is a subject for another post, but here’s something you can internalize right now: Those who share CI frequently — i.e., at least on a weekly basis — are the ones who tend to see results.

More specifically, compared to companies that share CI on a monthly basis, companies that share CI on a weekly basis are 31% more likely to report direct revenue impact.

5. Embrace technology

The negative impact of spending too much time conducting manual research is twofold:

1. You have less time to take action — train sales reps on the ins and outs of battlecards, communicate insights to key stakeholders, etc. — which, in turn, reduces ROI.
2. You’re at greater risk of analyzing and acting on insights that are no longer relevant, which further reduces ROI.

Only by embracing competitive intelligence technology can you both (1) give yourself and your colleagues more time to initiate action and (2) capitalize on real-time insights. Note that we’re not suggesting that buying a solution means putting your CI program on autopilot; it means improving the quality of your intel while enabling your team to get more value out of that intel.

If you can find a way to reallocate existing budget towards CI technology, chances are you’ll see positive returns. And if you’re not convinced, consider this: Between last year and this year, we can observe a 13% jump in the amount of time spent communicating competitive insights as well as a 17% jump in the number of businesses yielding ROI from their CI programs.

Coincidence? We think not.

Author: Conor Bond

Source: Crayon