Business Intelligence Beneftis - Part 2 : Increasing Revenue

Continue the first part, this part will tell us how BI can help increasing revenue.

1. Sell information to customers, partners, and suppliers

Leading organizations are using BI to differentiate their product and service offerings from competitors through value added, web-based services. In the past, many departments generated zero revenue, but now with BI extranets, they create a recurring revenue stream by selling information to customers, partners, and suppliers.

Owens & Minor: The $3 billion medical supplies distributor has signed up 80 hospital accounts and six of its top suppliers, including pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson, for the service. Hospitals pay up to $1,250 per month and suppliers pay $2,000 per month. It is estimated that Owens & Minor will generate at least $2 million in fees next year.

2. Improve strategies with better marketing analysis

With easy access to ordering, accounting, production, shipping, customer service, and even external databases, marketers can find answers to the most detailed of questions such as, "What was the success rate of my direct mail campaign?" or "What was the incremental revenue generated from the new TV ads we just ran?" or "Which ten items were most popular across our 50 stores during the past couple of weeks?"

With this information, the marketer can precisely tailor product launches and promotion campaigns to the targeted audience. Using BI, companies can micro segment their markets and gain an edge over the competition.

Ben & Jerry's: BI allows the U.S. ice cream maker to track, understand, and manage information on the thousands of consumer responses it receives on its products and promotional activities. Through daily customer feedback analysis, Ben & Jerry's is able to identify trends and modify its marketing campaigns and its products to suit consumer demand.

3. Empower your sales force

Better results from your sales force can be achieved by analyzing its selling patterns: compare results to targets, to figures from previous years, to other sales staff results, and suggest improvements. Encourage the sales force to focus on high profitability customers and products. The sales force can also use BI to analyze data on brands, clients, and distributors.

TaylorMade: "When salespeople went out to visit TaylorMade's customers at golf pro shops and sporting goods retail chains, they didn't have up-to-date inventory reports. The sales reps would take orders for clubs, accessories, and clothing without confidence that the goods were available for delivery as promised," [Tom Collard, information systems director with TaylorMade] says. "The technology has helped TaylorMade not only reduce costs by eliminating the reporting backlog...it has eliminated a lot of wasted effort that resulted from booking orders that it couldn't fill."

Next : Part 3 - Improving Customer Satisfaction