Empower employees to make informed decisions with easy-to-use business intelligence (BI) and analytics tools that seamlessly combines your existing data with external data.
Big data is intimidating. Quality data, on the other hand, can and should be a core decision factor in everything connected to your business. Data-based decision making, in fact, is starting to be a unifying factor among small and medium-sized businesses looking to survive and thrive in competitive environments. You might have heard about big data, the idea that the rise of digital technology has overwhelmed businesses with so many data points that they can be difficult to analyze. What should be an opportunity quickly becomes a problem, as your decision makers drown in analytics without the ability to differentiate and evaluate. Fortunately, that doesn’t have to be the case. Increasingly, thanks to new technologies and a better grasp of the depth of big data, businesses of all sizes are beginning to use it more effectively to their advantage. The Increased Usability of Big Data A recent survey by the Harvard Business Review returned a promising result: in 2017, 80 percent of businesses deem their big data and analytics investments to be successful. Used correctly, decision makers across industries state that it can decrease expenses, suggest new innovation technologies, helps in launching new products, and creates more revenue. In other words, as HBR points out: Big data is already being used to improve operational efficiency, and the ability to make informed decisions based on the very latest up-to-the-moment information is rapidly becoming the mainstream norm… About half of the executives (…) predict major disruption on the horizon, as big data continues to change how businesses operate and compete. Companies that fail to adapt do so at their own competitive and market risk. The same survey also saw a shift in the challenges facing big data adoption. Technologies that include the plethora of options to optimize data collection and analytics software are no longer the problem. Now, the biggest challenge is cultural, as companies run into road blocks looking to change their culture toward more data-based decision making. For businesses across industries, that shift is excellent news. The fact that the challenges are now qualitative means that implementation of a data-based strategy is no longer impeded by structural hurdles. Big data may still be intimidating, but a clear road map to success has been drawn. New Technologies that Build Big Data Capabilities When looking at companies’ priorities in data analytics, this shift can be seen in action. VentureBeat outlined five ways in which companies of all sizes are starting to utilize data analytics to their advantage: Predictive analytics, allowing your business to better understand what your customers need before they have to ask for it. Getting customers excited about their own data that can be relevant to their relationship with your company. Improving customer service efforts by providing quicker, more proactive, and more relevant assistance for any issues that inevitably come up. Identifying customer pain points through better audience analysis, allowing you to address underlying issues through core value propositions. In the healthcare industry, saving people’s lives through improved treatments. All of these […]
What makes your company and its product or service different from your competition? As any small or medium-sized business owner knows, the answer to that question is vital to long-term success. If you cannot differentiate yourself, your audience will eventually veer toward the lowest price point, making any business growth unsustainable. That’s what makes a value proposition such a crucial part of your marketing efforts. If you can concisely describe why your product is both valuable to your audience and different from its competition, you can build your entire business on that description. But how do you get there? Especially for startups and small businesses, coming up with the perfect value proposition can seem like a difficult endeavor. By gathering relevant data, you can make sure that the statement you end up with is not just relevant to your audience, but can also be used as the sustainable basis of your competitive advantage. First Step: Define the Problem Forbes.com quotes legendary inventor Charles Kettering in stating that “a problem well stated is a problem half solved.” Every product and business, at its core, should seek to solve an elementary problem that its audience solves. But how do you know what that problem is? This is where data first enters the equation. Through market research, even small businesses can define latent consumer and business needs that their products might solve. The process can be as simple as customer interviews and surveys, or as complex as in-depth evaluation of your audience’s daily behaviors. The key, on all ends of that spectrum, is the gathering and using of data to judge your results. If your audience wants to give you their feedback on latent or obvious problems they need a product to solve, you have to have a platform in which you can gather and evaluate that feedback. Survey tools connected to your CRM, for example, can help you organize your data in a single space. Second Step: Describe Your Solution Of course, a problem matters little if your business cannot fix it. Your product should promise to provide the solution to the problem(s) you found in the first step, helping to improve your audience’s lives in one way or the other. In this second step, it’s time to find out just how it might do this. At this point, don’t worry about your value proposition being a snappy marketing slogan or differentiating itself from your competition. The goal is purely to make sure that you can define exactly how your product would solve the problem defined in step 1. Third Step: Competitive Research Next, it’s time to understand exactly how your proposed solution fits into the competitive environment. Have other businesses also recognized the same problem as you, and are they trying to solve the problem? If so, is their solution different than yours, or similar? In the course of this step, data once again becomes crucial. Competitive research can go as far as understanding the keywords other businesses bid on in their search […]
Your choice of business intelligence platform is a major factor that affects the efficiency with which your data is analyzed and used in order to make better business decisions. The proliferation of business related technology and data solutions is at an all-time high, so finding the platform that meets your needs and budget can admittedly be challenging. Small and medium-sized businesses are especially at odds with the BI (business intelligence) market, since their needs are not quite as complex as major enterprises. While companies of all sizes make better decisions when they can see and understand their data, smaller businesses generally don’t have the staff or resources to afford the complex data environments and in-house data expertise that enterprise solutions often require. Instead, they need smaller-scale, specialized platforms that can offer personalized user-experiences without requiring data scientists, database administrators, and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of server hardware. Basically, these businesses want platforms that are effective while being priced for a smaller budget — investments in BI should enable the company to increase revenues and profits, not become a new cost center. Pricing, experience, and flexibility are just some of the factors that make it difficult for smaller businesses to find data solutions that present a truly effective business tool. With an overwhelming number of options available and very few BI providers offering trials long enough to make a lasting impression, some businesses may be settling for subpar or overly complicated products. INTELLAM delivers BI solutions for companies of all sizes by always maintaining the same high quality deliverables, regardless of the size of the client. Part of the way we are able to do this is by selecting the appropriate platform for the client — especially in the area of BI, one size does not fit all. For small and medium sized businesses, we typically recommend a tool offered by Dundas Data Visualization, as its analytics platform ranks very high on the Business Analytics Leaderboard of 2016 and its product is one of the most customizable platforms on the market without becoming unnecessarily technical. Here are the top six reasons we’d recommend considering Dundas Data for your business: 1. Reputable and Experienced Dundas has been a leading business intelligence provider for over twenty years. Since its beginning in 1992 it has accumulated an impressive roster of clients across many industries, including major enterprises such as Citibank and Microsoft, as well as tech startups and smaller organizations that benefit from their flexible platform design. Dundas Data Visualization has a long, successful history with a range of products that work well on their own and seamlessly when used together. Dundas has been an innovator in business intelligence and data visualization, providing deeper insights with greater speed and accuracy than most BI platforms can claim. 2. Adaptability One of Dundas’ greatest strengths is the flexibility of its platform. Full customization allows you to extend the platform beyond your Dundas programming and integrate as much support as you need. The programmable platform supports data preparation, reporting, analytics, and dashboards according to your needs. There is no reason to be stuck with features that you have no use for. With Dundas you control […]
Small/Medium Sized Business Data provides actionable intel. The use of data to create more targeted advertising continues to grow and become more sophisticated. Big-name companies have been utilizing it for years, but there is an uptick in small to medium sized businesses that are embracing the concept and see the undeniable benefits. Many small to medium sized businesses think that they simply can’t afford to invest in data about their customers. Actually, it’s quite the opposite. As a small to medium sized business, you can’t afford not to invest in data. Without solid information about customers, their purchasing patterns and potential to purchase, any investment in marketing is like shooting an arrow in the dark and hoping it gets somewhere near the target. Utilizing data is essential to growing your business. Here are several reasons why: Data is a good predictor of future buying habits: Utilizing data can provide a specific customer profile that not only defines demographics but also psychographics. It can paint a picture that enables you as a business owner to develop promotions based upon past successes and not mere assumptions. Data increases profitability: The use of data can provide an overview of a companies busiest times or highest volume of sales. This information can be used when scheduling employees so that payroll is not being wasted. Data provides the competitive edge needed: As a small to medium sized business, understanding competition is crucial to success. Data can provide the competitive edge needed to survive as a small to medium sized business. It enables businesses to be able to view the effectiveness of particular marketing efforts and provides information for future promotions. Data enables businesses to offer personalized solutions for consumers. Data enables you to really understand your customer: It’s not enough today to know basic demographics of your customer in order to stay ahead. Understanding why customers make their buying choices is essential. Data pulls together information from multiple sources and tells the story of the customer, their buying habits, likelihood to buy in the future and where to reach similar customers. Data not only maintains current customers, but helps target potential customers: Customer retention is key to success. Remember the old adage: 20% of your customers produce 80% of your business so understanding them and being able to retain them is absolutely essential. Data helps solve problems: Data provides insights as to what a business is doing right as well as what they may be doing wrong and enables them to tailor specific solutions to address these issues head on. Approximately 23 percent of small to medium sized businesses are utilizing data in some manner. Of that 23 percent, 73 percent report positive outcomes. Following are benefits that these businesses are reporting: 67% report that it helps them retain existing customers 65% say data helps improve the overall customer experience 44% report the benefit of being able to segment their small marketing lists This infographic provides great insight into how data provides key information about the customer […]
