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8 Customer Analytics to Drive Higher Profits
Everybody has metrics on their customers and sales. These are typically one dimensional - sales by customer, sales pipeline by stage in the sales process, customer satisfaction score. One metric based on one data source. These lack insight, are not actionable and give a false sense of understanding the business performance. How about some real analytics that can help real sales executives drive real revenue and profits with real customers? We believe analytics have 3 characteristics: 1. Incorporates different types of customer data (financial, operational, customer satisfaction; historical and projected) 2. Understands both performance and the root cause of that performance 3. Empowers users to act on the insight We believe there are eight analytics that will help drive customer profitability along three key dimensions: · Focus on the right customers · Improve sales team performance · Improve performance for customers These analytics include: 1. Product / Customer Growth Matrix 2. Customer Experience Map 3. ... Join us for a webinar discussion on October 28 to learn more about these metrics and analytics.
Lessons from Best-In-Class Service Organizations
Insightful reporting, KPI's and analytics for your service business can have a dramatic impact on services financial performance and customer experience. However, companies lack access to the key information required for services analytics because:
• Services data resides in many disparate planning and execution systems across various locations and business units
• The Service Enterprise is typically geographically dispersed and the customer and install base footprint is ever-changing
• Leaders lack integrated views and cannot analyze their business across dimensions such as offering & event types, business units, customers, product lines, regions, and segments
Success requires that multiple sources be accessed and integrated to achieve complete customer visibility and Service Enterprise optimization.
If you lead a Services Enterprise P&L or Cost Center, lead a Services Sales, Marketing or Operations function, or are responsible for customer advocacy and experience, join us for an upcoming Webinar that will:
1.Provide the opportunity to learn more about specific findings from Aberdeen's June 2009 Service Benchmarking and Measurement research report and illustrate what Best-in-Class Service companies are doing to leverage their disparate data and KPI's
2.Highlight examples from Thermo Fisher Scientific where integrated data is providing opportunity and an enhanced customer experience
3.Introduce a unique technology platform to help drive your Service business and customer experience
Hidden Benefits of Business Intelligence
Gut Check: Managing Data Proliferation to Create Opportunity
Time for Supply Chain Management Leaders to take on Business Intelligence
The Economy: Good or Bad for SaaS Business Intelligence?
Take Time to Get the Metrics Right
Timeless Software at SAPPHIRE 2009
The 360 Degree View
Under The Customer Experience Big Tent
Hidden Benefits of Business Intelligence
"I used to spend 30 hours assembling information in spreadsheets to understand and analyze the details of my transportation operations. With my Oco BI solution, I now spend minutes and am able to analyze any aspect of my operations. More importantly, I have time to work with my carriers and customers to address and fix the issues I find from our powerful Business Intelligence solution. I can act and see marked improvement, rather than run in circles." - Quote from Kevin Kilcoyne, Senior Manager of Transportation and Logistics, Welch's Foods.
I have always felt that managers and analysts in most companies spend 90% of their time assembling the information they need, and 10% really analyzing it and acting on it. If a company can reverse this ratio and spend 10% assembling information and 90% of their time responding and executing, companies would be much better off. I see thoughtfully applied Business Intelligence as a very effective way for companies to reverse this "prepare information vs. analyze and act" ratio.
It takes a lot for companies, customers, and vendors to alter behavior and make changes. However, when you free up time to work on these issues, it really make a difference.
Lessons from Best-In-Class Service Organizations
Gut Check: Managing Data Proliferation to Create Opportunity
Time for Supply Chain Management Leaders to take on Business Intelligence
The Economy: Good or Bad for SaaS Business Intelligence?
Take Time to Get the Metrics Right
Timeless Software at SAPPHIRE 2009
The 360 Degree View
Under The Customer Experience Big Tent
Gut Check: Managing Data Proliferation to Create Opportunity
I do not believe anyone would disagree that we live in a time where available information is scaling exponentially both in the consumer and B2B domains. This can create both paralysis and opportunity at the same time. After all, a once small company you may have heard called Google has had some success bridging the chasm between data anxiety and opportunity.
 In fact their corporate mission statement reads: Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. There are three thematic threads in this statement which are worthy of discussion to help focus the data proliferation solution:
1.Organizing and integrating data
2.Universal access
3.Usefulness
Organized and Integrated Data: Organizations should be thinking about their ability to provide interactive, intuitive, and accessible measurement, analysis, and reporting solutions that considers all cross functional data and sources. Most, if not all businesses, operate with disparate databases and sources. Even those entities that have standardized on a global ERP system still have data housed in a variety of other execution systems (call centers, CRM systems, planning systems, warehouse management systems, etc), as well as budgeting and plan information that may reside in spreadsheets. Consider the environment and data sources that could be of interest to help analyze and obtain a comprehensive view of your customers (their satisfaction, your delivery, and resulting financials) as depicted below:
Providing the business user with a platform that unifies and organizes the rich data in this cross system puzzle in an accessible form is a real value driver. This helps provide context and leverages the data to enable actions that are thoughtful, strategic, and aware of all of the critical, yet sometimes competing, factors. In fact, Aberdeen Group’s Services Chain Practice (I feel one of the most comprehensive analyst groups when it comes to Services) published some findings in a June Services Benchmarking and Measurement report indicating that ~ 30% of the Best-in-Class (BIC) companies they surveyed are planning to undertake actions to integrate data into a common service performance database and 45% of these best-in-class companies are using an Enterprise-wide Business Intelligence / Analytics System. Perhaps these BIC companies are onto something.
By way of example, imagine the ability to select and prioritize your suppliers not simply by spend performance but also by other relevant operational metrics that impact your performance and customers. You might want to create a supplier scorecard containing a composite score and ranking of suppliers by the following metrics (from a variety of sources):
•Total Spend and Purchase Price Variance
•Supplier Cost Productivity
•On-Time Delivery
•Order Fill Rate
•Inventory Days of Supply
•Defect Rate
•Invoice Accuracy
This holistic view of your supplier base clearly provides a more strategic perspective than just spend analysis and positions you for profitable growth and improved customer service.
Universal Access & Usefulness: Let’s assume you agree with the premise that rich data that is integrated and has context is a worthy objective. You pursue the hard work to make this a reality…. now what? What I have often witnessed is this data is now guarded and locked down within IT organizations. Instead of the Data Warehouse promoting ubiquitous use it starts to feel more like the “Data Vault”. I would argue you need to expose this rich resource to your business community in a platform that is easy to access, intuitive, requires limited training, and is meaningful. This data could even be exposed to strategic external supply-chain partners and customers where appropriate. This collaborative approach and data access starts to create some real differentiation. Yes data needs to be compartmentalized, and there needs to be serious Access Control Logic that enables role-based security at the report row level, but these capabilities already exist in most reporting solutions.
Lastly, make sure when you embark down this path you spend some focused time creating reporting that is targeted at specific functional needs and which helps operating teams answer the questions at hand. IT and the business leadership team need to coalesce around reporting, KPI, and dashboard solution requirements. Leverage existing domain expertise that is available within many solutions but make sure there is enough flexibility to tailor this business intelligence system to your unique situation. One size does not fit all.
Next up on this customer experience blog will be a discussion on the importance of Enterprise Accountability --- Instill a culture of customer accountability across the enterprise… it is not the sole responsibility of the services team.
Until then, good luck with your mission to organize your company’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
Hidden Benefits of Business Intelligence
Lessons from Best-In-Class Service Organizations
Time for Supply Chain Management Leaders to take on Business Intelligence
The Economy: Good or Bad for SaaS Business Intelligence?
Take Time to Get the Metrics Right
Timeless Software at SAPPHIRE 2009
The 360 Degree View
Under The Customer Experience Big Tent
Time for Supply Chain Management Leaders to take on Business Intelligence
While Business Intelligence (BI) has delivered powerful results for many companies over the past decade, the majority of applications have focused more on marketing, sales, customer and financial analysis - and less on operations and supply chain management. This is changing rapidly, and it is time for more supply chain executives to get on board.
I see three areas where BI is making a big impact on supply chain management:
Deeper Functional Analysis—Companies are using BI tools and analytics and reporting to get deeper insight into key functional areas, particularly in transportation cost analysis and inventory performance.
- BI is providing a full view of the transportation spend for many companies, allowing them both a broader and a deeper view. It is allowing visibility to the total transportation spend on contract carriers, common carriers, private fleet including all maintenance expenditures, and the transportation overhead. So now, the full budget can be monitored and tracked at the lowest level of detail.
Moreover, it is allowing a deeper view of transportation costs, for example - by lane, by carrier, by shipping point, by customer, by product group, by detailed accessorial changes and by period-over-period. This deep analysis allows companies to uncover pockets of value. Welch’s, for example, has found major cost saving opportunities by bringing BI to transportation.
- In the inventory area, BI can bring all the information together to gain new insights, as well as the information needed to act to avoid problems. BI solutions identify items at risk of excess inventory or stock-outs, and provide information in the same report on open purchase orders that need to be pulled in or pushed out to avoid inventory imbalances. Beckman Coulter was able to reduce its global parts inventory by over 15% with a BI solution.
Advanced Metrics—Very few companies are able to track advanced supply chain metrics such as cost-to-serve, the perfect order, the vendor scorecard or customer, product or channel profitability. BI solutions are making these advanced metrics more easily available.
Collaboration—BI solutions, and especially web based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) BI solutions, are increasingly being used for collaboration with customers, suppliers, and carriers. It becomes very easy to allow a shared view of critical metrics and reports that keeps all parties aligned. Moreover, we are seeing more Sales and Operations Planning Meetings (S&OPM) supported by BI that can allow manufacturing, inventory planning, sales and others to view and engage in “what-if” analyses using the same information during S&OP meetings. This provides one version of the truth and allows much better communication among the participants.
What BI applications have you looked at or are using for supply chain management? What benefits or issues are you finding? I welcome your comments.
Hidden Benefits of Business Intelligence
Lessons from Best-In-Class Service Organizations
Time for Supply Chain Management Leaders to take on Business Intelligence
The Economy: Good or Bad for SaaS Business Intelligence?
Take Time to Get the Metrics Right
Timeless Software at SAPPHIRE 2009
The 360 Degree View
Under The Customer Experience Big Tent
The Economy: Good or Bad for SaaS Business Intelligence?
With the economy continuing to struggle, many people I speak with in the industry feel optimistic that the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business model is holding up well and is, in fact, poised to benefit. If one were to look at the SaaS bell weather, Salesforce.com, it would be easy to support that argument. The problem, however, is that while Salesforce.com is doing well in recent times (despite the gloomy economy) the vast majority of other SaaS vendors are either:
a) Privately held and therefore hard to gauge in terms of "how they are doing", and
b) Are still too young in their evolution...meaning that even if they were growing at a healthy clip in the down economy (ie: double-digit growth), it is hard to tell if "they are doing well".
Also, what metrics would one look at to assess growth for these firms? What might be a meaningful metric to measure some of these firms may be far less meaningful for the others.
Measurements aside, here are some thoughts about why the SaaS Business Intelligence segment should be doing well:
- It's faster to deploy vs. on-premise, therefore, can provide faster business benefit
- It offers a better economic model vs. on-premise....lower TCO
- Customers can "stretch" their existing budgets more (the SaaS model usually means little-to-no capital expenditure) and still get a solution
- An already over burdened IT staff can off load much of the low-value work associated with hardware provisioning, software provisioning, software configuration, database tuning, backups, etc. to the SaaS provider...therefore freeing them to focus on higher-value tasks to support the business
- Some SaaS Business Intelligence offerings are geared to specific functional areas and business problems and can therefore drive some tangible business benefit (ie: Inventory Cost Reduction, Increased Customer Retention, Lower Transportation Costs, Improve Gross Margins, etc.).
These points all make sense to me. If you were to say to a CFO..."you can have a BI solution up and running in 8-10 weeks, with little-to-no upfront investment, minimal disruption to your IT staff, and it would be well aligned to your strategic business initiatives..." why wouldn't he/she not want to give it a try?
Here are some reasons why many organizations are still not making the leap to SaaS BI:
- The SaaS model is disruptive to many of the traditional ways of procuring and deploying software....it's different, therefore, it requires change and a lot of people don't like change
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