Improving Your Business Intelligence
"The more you know, the more you grow."
Although it may be a little cliché, the saying is true. Any time you need to make an important decision in life, gathering and considering the facts improves the likelihood you will make a wise judgment.
For an organization, this means gathering business intelligence: collecting information, mining data, generating and analyzing reports.
Unfortunately, businesses often struggle to deliver the right business information to the right employees at the right time. This is usually due to challenges with master data management resulting from integration problems with their web-based data.
The Challenge of Master Data Management
In order to enable the smart use of business intelligence within all levels of your company, data must not only be accurate, but also stored in a unified system. One of the biggest challenges companies encounter with this "master data management" is integrating their web analytics and other online data with other solutions, while maintaining data integrity. This is often due to the cross-platform challenges that arise when shifting between IT environments.
Gartner Inc. recently released its review of enterprise level business intelligence platforms. As you can see in the chart above, the majority of popular enterprise-level business intelligence software solutions operate in a .Net environment. In contrast, your website and related online applications may use other languages, like Ruby on Rails, to collect and store data.
Both business intelligence software and web analytics programs like Atlas, Doubleclick, Omniture or CoreMetrics can be a large investment. And in order to get the most the most of your business intelligence, you must be able to leverage both.
Web Analytics + Business Analytics = Success
When it comes to identifying opportunities for business growth, your web analytics can be just as important as your sales data. It can help you:
- Drive research and development - Keyword data can supply you with information about products and services that your customers want, but aren't included in your current offerings, resulting in innovation
- Increase marketshare - User click-path data can help you identify and resolve barriers in the conversion process, leading to higher online ROI
- Identify the best investments - Goal-based web analytics data can help you determine which marketing initiatives are driving real sales and leads
Unfortunately, web analytics programs come with their own pitfalls . All your different marketing campaign channels - SEO, PPC, email, display advertising and affiliate marketing programs - have data encoded within tags on your website. Managing all of these tags is cumbersome; reconciling data provided by disparate systems is challenging; and all the tags can slow down your website. It also could be costing you money in the form of duplicate payments.
Request A Free Web Site Analytics Assessment
If you aren't getting enough business intelligence from your web analytics, or you are experiencing problems integrating it into your master data management system, the experts at Stone Crossing Solutions can help. With experienced developers in both .Net and other enterprise solutions, as well as custom software solutions , we understand what needs to be done, and have the skills necessary to get it done right the first time.
Even better, our approach as business consultants means that we can help you improve your business intelligence by ensuring it aligns with your business goals and strategy. We will consider what your employees to need to achieve, help you deliver the information in a user-friendly format, and can even provide the training necessary for them to master the solution.