Open Solutions Inc., Developers of eBusiness Software Solutions.

Data Analytics - Offers Insight and Control

Analyzing business data can result in an immediate return on investment of as much as 112 per cent, according to an IDC analyst speaking to press in October 2005. "Analytic changes mean big changes in dollars earned and dollars saved," said Robert Bumstein, research director of CRM analytics and marketing applications with IDC.

A huge number of companies are still using spreadsheets or gut instinct to analyze their data. ResQ's Data Analytics provides speed, accuracy, insight, relevance, consistency and control. With ResQ's integrated database you can extract more value from your data in real time.

Spreadsheets were not designed to answer these questions. Many companies rely on a moving average to forecast sales, which doesn't take into account seasonal or event based purchasing patterns. Spreadsheets are also prone to have flawed data which may not be evident when they are maintained in isolation. Analyzing data that is derived directly from a database query has a high degree of accuracy and can be confidently relied on for decision making. Company executives can instantly review any aspect of the past, present and future of their business.

OSI has provided solutions for tracking, analyzing and modeling data as well as predictive analytics in the banking industry. These are the analytics that can give your company an edge. It provides a complex method of predicting the future and can include inventory optimization, fraud detection and resource planning.

Marketing

A company decides to allocate $200,000 to promote the next release of their ZIP2500 IP Communications platform. Where should they spend their advertising dollars? Should they purchase half page ads in a Telco trade magazine? Should they participate in a CTI exposition? Or should they target data VAR's at various smaller trade shows?

The database analysis provides the answer. It reveals that last year when they promoted the predecessor to

the ZIP2500 they utilized all three methods with varying levels of results.

Last years original promotion was in a major CTI trade show. The data indicated that while there was success, the show cost $50,000 and resulted in about 300 leads of which 20 new resellers signed on to carry the product. Analysis of the sales leads indicated that there was a lot of contact with resellers who already carried the product or had already heard of us, but the product did not fit into their business.

The next effort was participation in a mid size data convergence trade show. The data analysis indicates that this show cost $25,000 and was about a quarter of the size of the CTI show when measuring the number of attendees. The resulting sales leads however were much more favorable. Our marketing and sales forecasting data tells us that there were 500 leads of which 25 resellers signed up on the spot and 50 more signed after a brief sales cycle.

The data on the number of attributed sales leads arising from 6 months of trade magazine ads is more difficult to track because there is less control on the source of the data. The magazine sent us 1,000 information requests, of which only 8 resellers can be attributed to signing on as a direct result of seeing the ads. The data did however go on to tell us that prospects indicating that they came across our company from other sources did see our ads at some point during that advertising period. This tells us that although in comparison the ads did not contribute to the degree that the other efforts did, it was a good supporting effort for other avenues.

It's this type of analysis that will help determine where this company spends this year's increased marketing budget. Data analysis will continue to allow them to focus their efforts where the best return is found.

When combined with the analysis of how much revenue one reseller represents to the company they can easily begin to determine the ROI on their ResQ Enterprise™ solution. This coupled with the many other benefits of ResQ contribute to a return on investment measure in months not years.

Customer analytics is about understanding, responding to, as well as anticipating customer behavior. If a company can leverage the data they've collected and analyzed, they should be able to serve their current and potential customers more effectively and gain a competitive edge. In the coming years, integrated CRM and customer analytics will become crucial to success.

	Tech News