Thursday, July 2, 2009

The benefits of Business Intelligence for marketers


I read in Dashboard Insight an interesting article about the benefits of business intelligence for marketers, called Justifying Marketing Budgets By Using BI, written by Lyndsay Wise. She starts the article talking how marketers use analytics to drive performance: "Defined marketing metrics enable marketers to plan campaigns and activities while identifying which activities generate the most success. Whether selecting an application designed specifically for marketing departments or building a customized solution, BI and the use of analytics within marketing departments have multiple uses. Marketers can look at information collected across the organization including sales, customer experience management, etc. and cross-reference that data with campaign success. In addition, external information can be collected from blogs, competitor web sites, social media forums and the like to create an accurate picture of current brand perceptions, market gaps and successful campaigns."

She explains that "Successful marketing management involves more than simply campaign management. The ability to transfer general marketing activities to BI allows better metrics identification, monitoring, planning, and gives organizations the ability to integrate marketing department metrics into the use of BI for executive management."

She talking about tying business value to BI for marketing: "Looking at the many aspects that go into the successful completion of marketing campaigns and the use of BI to develop pricing, product and branding strategies - while tying these to the overall performance of the organization - shows the diversity BI adds to help enhance how marketing departments complete projects and define metrics. The ability to tie BI to both marketing and the organization’s overall initiatives highlights the increasing value to organizations using BI."

"Organizations need to decide what the purpose of their application will be. For instance, instead of developing a full marketing analytics solution that helps identify successful strategies for pricing or product lifecycle, organizations may decide that identifying the success of marketing campaigns is the best entry point for eventual expansion into broader marketing analytics and dashboard deployment", she said.

She finished with: "There are multiple ways marketers benefit from using BI. With the ability to integrate metrics from various departments and analyze how disparate metrics fit into the overall strategic goals of the organization, marketers can justify their spending by tying sales successes to completed campaigns."

Lyndsay Wise wrote an interesting article, the use of BI for marketers is important for develop better campaigns, because the BI can help the marketers to identify successful strategies, integrating metrics through the organization, allowing a better knowledge of the organization and also an alignment with the strategic goals.

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