Competitive Intelligence Case Study #1

Here is a recent example of a successful project that leveraged "competitive intelligence" to greatly enhance the sales and marketing efforts of a leading software company.

Relevant Reading

A great presentation from the good folks at Aquent.

Making Marketing Smarter Amidst the Cuts

View more presentations from Aquent Webmaster.

The ever increasing importance and availability of Marketing Analytics

Something that has long plagued the realm of marketing can now be strength. For the longest time marketing activities created results that were vague and difficult to measure. For example, how does one effectively measure the impact of a $500k commercial? As a result no hard fast ROI or impact could be measured by the folks in finance and the feel good activities, such as brand building, become the first things to get axed during difficult times like the ones we are currently facing.

Until now….

Our ability to obtain, analyze, and exploit data has improved drastically over the last few years. While it doesn’t quite have the buzz as something like “Social Media” or “Marketing Automation”, marketing analytics is just as if not more important. A successful marketing analyst can have a positive impact on every aspect of marketing- from market research all the way to revising a merchandising strategy. Here are few steps that will allow you to get back in the good graces of the guys in finance.

Data Accessibility

The marketing department has historically been dependent on a team of data analysts who were well versed in SQL and database management in order to get data. A disconnect usually resulted as analysts, failing to understand the business needs behind the request, would supply incomplete or rigid data to a marketing team, that wasn’t doing a great job of communicating their needs.

Don’t despair. There are several programs out there, such as U/SQL, which will allow marketing analysts to pull data from the warehouse. And the great thing about these programs is that you don’t need to be well versed in SQL programming. If this still appears too difficult or if your marketing team is constrained by an old legacy we recommend that you contract with a third party that can build an effective bridge. The bottom line is that you need to be able to get to all of your data.

Data Manageability

Now more marketing analysts are learning enough about databases to become dangerous. Simple bridges can be established to connect directly to the data source. And now that Excel 2007 can allow for over a million rows of data just about anyone can now effectively pivot data to pull out meaningful insights. Complicated procedures associated with setting up OLAP cubes are no longer as necessary. There are also plenty of products, such as Tableau Software, that do an excellent job of making the data visually come to life.

Once this is established the team can then focus on weightier matters…namely analyzing and coming up with effective measures that impact their unit’s bottom line. A competent analyst or third party will be able to create an automated dashboard or worksheet that will efficiently bring in data and allow it to be measured according to specified KPI’s and measures. This streamlined process will then free up the team to focus on ad-hoc or other projects that are deemed important.

Data Exploitation

If you’ve followed the above two recommendations than you are on the cusp of justifying your existence to the guys in finance. Why? Because you’ve minimized the amount of time needed to obtain and analyze data. You have reduced the need for an additional layer of IT support. And you’ve set the ground work for the types of measurable analysis that they demand in order to green light future marketing expenditures and justify current projects. The numbers don’t lie and now you’ve got them on your side.

With the data close at hand you can easily perform the types of analysis needed by finance to gauge viability. You perform statistical analysis to look for significant trends and insights in sales data. You can visually show the impact that a certain promotion had over a certain region in order to better understand its impact. The bottom line is that you can now look so much cooler and do so much more then you could just a few years ago when these kinds of dreams would have only been fulfilled by a costly Business Intelligence software implementation.

Happy mining! It’s a brave new world. But the sooner you can figure out how to get direct access to your data the better you are. And the more time you can spend analyzing the data instead of getting it the better you are for your company. During lean times like these this is prescription that will carry some serious benefit.

Overview of Lacuna Enterprise Offerings

Several of you have asked something that is both concise and illustrative of the core services offered to mid-sized companies. Here it is.

Lacuna Case Study

A Brave New Online Marketing World

Remember the mid-90’s when the internet was in its infancy? We were mesmerized with this nascent in spite of the fact that we were only viewing a few relatively static chat rooms and limited sites. But the possibility was there and the ambitious soon began to flood the market with ways to exploit this new undiscovered country. Some early ideas worked and others, such as CRM, were great ideas in theory but horrible in practice.

Well thanks to the ASP, SaaS, and Cloud Computing the once clunky software implementations that weighed the original CRM offerings in infamy we now have very feasible options that are even accessible to the average Joe Smith operating a small business on 123 Anywhere Street. Take a product tour from Marketo, Infusionsoft, Netsuite, Omniture, or Exact Target and you will be equally impressed. What was once a vague and brilliant idea has now become a hard and fast reality.

Alright, this stuff is great. You get the point.

Let’s discuss who should be concerned with such applications. It is really quite simple. Anyone who is looking to create a more visible and measurable relationship with its market or audience will greatly benefit from things like web analytics, online marketing, or marketing automation. Let me give you a few quick examples:

- The owner of a Dental Practice who has two primary customer bases (those who just need cheap, basic services and those requiring the more expensive activities like cosmetic dentistry) and wants to create separate messages to those audiences.

- The partner of Business Consultancy that is dealing with a longer sales cycle and wants something to help him nurture his leads.

- The mid-sized consumer product company that wants to more closely communicate with its top customers through something like a blog.

- Any Small, Medium, or Large company that wants to keep tabs on its competition by getting constant updates every time one of them is mentioned in the press.

I could keep listing plausible scenarios. The fact that we now have technology that can provide scalable results to the myriad of data points that surround each customer interaction should be music to the ears of anyone with a desire to grow their business. Gone are the days when 90% of the time was spent querying a database trying to obtain data; now the bulk of the effort can be spent creating actionable intelligence that can drive business strategy and grow revenue.

Take advantage of these programs. Evaluate some of these technologies. If you don’t have the budget to fully implement and run one of these applications then find an outsourced partner that can do that for you. Your business will thrive and your customer relationships will be as rich as a double fudge brownie sans milk.

Why marketing is essential to your company’s survival

To paraphrase an old maxim, “Change is constant.” We see it in our lives, we witness it within our communities, and we certainly face it every day at the work place. Companies that don’t embrace this truth run the risk of losing relevancy, market share, and the hearts and minds of their consumers. The enterprise that can effectively gauge trends and act on them has the clear upper hand; just ask Ford, Yahoo, or Palm the price of not adapting to market trends.

The marketing organization is in a unique place when it comes to shaping corporate strategy. It conducts the market research that helps determine product characteristics. It monitors the competition and pores over endless trade and industry journals. It has the structure and discipline to handle the insights gained from the sales force in the field. Marketing conducts the focus groups that are designed to flesh out the concerns, wants, and desires of their consumer base. These kinds of insights are invaluable. There is no better organization within the company to be manning the ‘crows nest’ to help the company steer clear of threats and challenges.

So marketing is in the cat bird’s seat when it comes to determining corporate strategy. What are some things it can to do to ensure that it gets its just due?

• Aggregate and effectively manage information- Make it a point to collect information. Make it a bigger point to organize your data in a manner that allows it to be easily sorted and accessed. There is a tremendous amount of gold that can be mined with a little bit of focused and structured data mining. Create an appropriate taxonomy that will allow you to easily search through everything ranging from point of sales (POS) data to the results from your latest email campaign.
• Invest in someone in a strategic capacity- Earnings pressure typically force most companies to become short sighted and cut back on concerted strategic efforts. While the short term results might not be affected it has a major detrimental impact on the company to be able to forecast events in the future. A smart company will have someone whose job it is to manage all market observations and to provide thoughtful recommendations based on these trends.
• Find ways to communicate with your customer- You need to have a meaningful and frequent relationship with customers. There are several traditional means to do this such as focus groups and telephone interviews. Technology also allows for many new forms of interactive or permission based marketing initiatives. Your most loyal customers will be flattered that you are considering their opinion and will often provide brilliant and frank opinions.
• Capitalize on your internet strategy- We live in a time where we are swimming in information. Chances are there plenty of chatrooms, blogs, and web communities that actively discuss your products relative to their competition. These sites are gold mines for determining what is taking place on a grass roots level. Don’t be afraid to aggressively obtain customer information and don’t be afraid to use that information in tailoring your marketing campaigns.