Posts Tagged ‘business’
Business Intelligence Model for 2010
Business intelligence, defined in other words, is the set of processes, skills, technologies, practices and applications used to support decision-making within a corporate or industrial framework. Prudent executives familiar with this relatively new concept are, more and more, implementing projects to leverage the kind of usable information that supports better decision-making in their own corporations and industries.
New times bring new realities, and thus, new business models and concepts. Business Intelligence, or BI, is one such concept. It’s a new year, a new decade, and in a previously shaky but hopefully on-the-mend economic climate, businesses and organizations in every industry are finding themselves more pressed to find a competitive edge within their markets in order to not only succeed, but simply survive. In 1989 Howard Dresner (later a GartnerGroup analyst) proposed this umbrella term to describe “concepts and methods to improve business decision making by using fact-based support systems.” The term was not popularized until almost ten years later. Its usage is now widespread, but still in its infancy as far as implementation.
Business or competitive intelligence projects can take many forms. Some of these projects might include the implementation of industry-specific analytic applications delivered via software with business intelligence capabilities. According to a paper entitled “Gartner Reveals Five Business Intelligence Predictions for 2009 and Beyond,” by 2012, business units will control at least 40% of their total budget for business intelligence. Other BI projects might include implementing events like summits and conferences, such as through services offered by the Marcus Evans group, to encourage the spread of information and the enforcement of data access for the entire organization.
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Also referred to as competitive intelligence, BI is one model executives and managers can use to help them strategize after they have gathered information – in ways that are ethical and legal – from the external business environment (i.e., analyzing the competition) and converted that information into usable intelligence to help them raise their own competitive standards. It’s important to recognize, however, that competitive intelligence is about more than just analyzing competitors, it’s about channeling data-gathering efforts toward the end goal of making the organization more competitive relative to its environment.
The following are just a few critical factors needed for the successful implementation of a business intelligence system: a clear vision & planning, committed management support & sponsorship, business driven methodology & project management, data management & quality issues, performance considerations, mapping the solutions to user requirements, robust & extensible framework, brain-storming and information gathering. A business event such as those coordinated by corporate hospitality and production specialists at the Marcus Evans group is one such medium which can be highly conducive to the dispersion of such knowledge throughout the ranks of an organization.
First, companies must appoint “enterprise architects” to head up intelligence gathering and analytic efforts. Then, it’s up to decision-makers to form strategies based on this information, ultimately dispersing them through appropriate channels via business events and gatherings such as those offered by Marcus Evans. According to the same Gartner paper previously referenced, through 2012, more than 35% of the top 5,000 global companies will regularly fail to make insightful decisions about significant changes in their business and markets, simply because of lack of information, processes, and tools.
By Jenny Heart. Marcus Evans professional training provided at Marcus Evans business conferences worldwide. Learn more about Marcus Evans global summits.
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Useful Resources of Business Intelligence for All Level of Organization
“Business Intelligence plays important role for your business growth”. People know this one but don’t know how? Business intelligence technology provides your detailed information about your business operations such as business data analysis, products sales revenues, data mining, predictive analysis, business performance management and benchmarking.
You can also say business intelligence as competitive intelligence they support decision making techniques for your business. Business Intelligence Software always use data of your business data warehouse not all data but some informal business data coz BI is the process to convert your business raw data in to meaningful information which used for decision making process to your business also it include some technologies such as data integration, data quality, data warehousing, master data management, text and content analytics for data preparations.
Business Intelligence Software is widely used for following business purposes in order drive to business market values:
Measurements of organization’s activities and performance with business goals
Business Analytics includes data analytics, statistical analysis, Predictive analytics, Predictive modeling, Business process modeling.
Enterprise Reporting with Data visualization, Executive information system, and OLAP
Business Data Collaboration for data sharing and electronic data interchange
Knowledge management go ahead with Learning Management and Regulatory compliance/Compliance of your business
Useful Business Intelligence Tools:
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Business Intelligence Software has some important resources which helpful for both customers and business owner to understand business goals and values:
BI Enquiries:- Through this customer can easily manage and personalize their enquiries with multi dimensional environment and summarizing their data in rows and columns.
BI Reports:- You can create, save and update reports for your specific requirements and also make these reports in excel and your desired file types.
BI Dashboard:- It’s like your own dashboard mean, you can brings all of your useful information in one workplace and also you can select some visual tools like gauges, dials or grids for your personalize data.
XL One Reporting:- This reporting tool is not provided by all BI vendors but as per your requirement they offer you. You can present your experience through Microsoft Excel interface with your Business Intelligence Software.
Business ETL:- It is one of the best toolset for collecting, managing , and organizing your informative data. Its abbreviated of Extract, Transform, Load process for data warehousing. It’s collect data from different sources and organizes use this data for other business processes like HR process, Financial and payroll process.
Finally Business owner whatsoever any type of business is and they always think about Business Intelligence. If they want to develop business intelligence software as per their business requirement then they can contact software outsourcing company for desired BI applications.
He has been working as business analyst in india based IT Outsourcing company. Aegis Global Software offering Data mining software solutions for statistical predictions, grouping and classification of business data.
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Incorporating Business Intelligence Tools
Business intelligence enables employees to take prompt decisions depending on relevant and updated information and thus helps businesses to focus better. The synthesis is achieved in diverse fields such as accessibility of information, performance, entirety of information, and flexibility. The task is effectively managed by a business intelligence consultant.
Business intelligence enables that deciders on any of the levels can access enterprise information. This means that the company resources are mobilised largely and thus available to people at different hierarchical levels such as managers, business partners, consultants and end users.
Business intelligence improves the overall performance and productivity. It relieves the ERP in operation from the analytical tasks, thus leaves scope for legacy capacity, and improves the performance in case of operational tasks.
Business intelligence acts as a kind of flexible umbrella thus facilitating the connection between diverse bits of information across different platforms, enabling backend integration tool and thus creating a holistic approach. The connections can be smoothly established between different platforms and severed when the need arises for the same and depending on the present market situation.
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The comprehensive information available to all enables smooth decision-making. Situations that effectively witness the choices are the ones that include distributed and heterogeneous systems, do not contain any harmonious data, and works with considerably high data volumes. These are effective in situations that require product analysis, cash flow management and risk analysis as well.
Business intelligence revolves around online analytical processing, benchmarking, predictive analytics, data mining, online analytical processing and text mining. A BI system is thus often alternatively referred to as a DSS or decision support system. It is in fact a subset of competitive intelligence. It utilises applications, technologies and diverse processes for the analysis of structured data, internal and business processes. Business intelligence can be applied to a number of business purposes in order to increase business value. These include analytics, knowledge management, measurement, collaboration platform and enterprise reporting.
Business intelligence consultants make use of tools such as Microsoft SharePoint. It is equipped with features such as scorecards, databases, dashboards, business applications that are all intended towards delivering specific needs. It is necessary to consider certain factors before incorporating business intelligence practices into the work process of a company. It is to be used by the people in the organisation in order to add much more value to the work process. The system should have a high usability. In order to make it more user-friendly, it is necessary that its end users be consulted during the initial stages of its development.
Specific sectors require business intelligence systems to be developed in a way that meets the functional requirements of the sector. This especially holds true for governmental banking regulations. The information gathered by banking institutions and thereafter analysed with the help of BI software needs to be protected from a certain section and at the same time made available to another group of individuals. It is necessary that business intelligence solutions are sensitive to the requirements of the users and is flexible enough to adapt to the regulations.
A business consultant by profession, Brian Terrace advises the top honchos from leading business houses to adopt the latest technology and methods to make their presence felt in the market. He stresses on the need for hiring a business intelligence consultant in this regard.
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The relevance of business intelligence to a modern-day organization
BI technologies offer current, historical as well as predictive views about business operations. The most common functions of BI technologies are online analytical processing, data mining, reporting, analytics, business performance management, text mining, predictive analytics and text mining.
Business Intelligence extends its support to organizations and aims at better decision-making. Therefore, a Business Intelligence system can also be referred to as decision support system or DSS. The term business intelligence is synonymous with competitive intelligence since both of them support decision-making. In addition, BI utilizes processes, applications and technologies for analysis of structured, internal data as well as business processes. However, competitive intelligence focuses on collection, dissemination as well as analysis of information in the presence or absence of technical support. It also concentrates both on external as well as internal all-source data (structured or unstructured) and information.
Business Intelligence can also be utilized for various business purposes with the aim of driving business value. These include measurements, analytics, enterprise reporting, and collaboration platform as well as knowledge management. Measurement encompasses programs that help in creating a hierarchy of performance metrics as well as benchmarking that provides information to business owners about achievement of business goals. Likewise, analytics establishes quantitative processes for businesses that help them arrive at optimum decisions. In addition, it also helps in carrying out business knowledge discovery. Analytics incorporates statistical analysis, predictive modeling, predictive analytics and business process modeling.
Enterprise reporting builds infrastructure to address to the strategic requirements of a business. It includes OLAP, executive information system and data visualization. Moreover, collaboration platform involves the collaboration of various areas through electronic data interchange and data sharing. In addition, knowledge management makes a company data-driven through various practices and strategies that identify, represent, create, distribute as well as enable adoption of experiences and insights that is business knowledge in the true sense. Knowledge Management also facilitates regulatory compliance and learning management.
There are several factors that are critical to the implementation of business intelligence. These include vision and planning, quality and data management, mapping solutions as per the requirement of users, performance considerations, expandable and robust framework, project management and business-driven methodology.
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Improving Business Intelligence With CRM Software
Not all companies are aware that within them resides their greatest asset – their customer database. Just like a diamond in the rough, it patiently waits to be discovered and polished. Until then can you view its true value. With CRM Software, harnessing this hidden asset can mean a hefty change for your business.
By using these data in your CRM system intelligently, you gain a competitive edge. This is called Business Intelligence or BI. It is the management of a company’s internal data which involves the extraction, transformation of data so that it comes out as intelligent information. This enables a business make better decisions basing on its own historic information, allowing companies to project possible future trends, thus, not only does a company gain business intelligence but also competitive intelligence.
Forrester Research quotes that “Business Intelligence is a set of methodologies, processes, architectures, and technologies that transform raw data into meaningful and useful information used to enable more effective strategic, tactical, and operational insights and decision-making.”
So, how is Business Intelligence relevant to Customer Relationship Management?
Business Intelligence plays a vital role in establishing a successful CRM system strategy within a company, whereby each and every employee work together to create and maintain the relationship that the company has with each and every individual customer. Business Intelligence can be viewed as a helping tool in enabling your CRM system strategy in your company.
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Business intelligence has some requirements though before you can start improving it. A few of said requirements are:
1. Data Integrity
Start with a clean database. The only way to achieve Business Intelligence is by maintaining data integrity. Filter out information for duplicate entries. Future decisions can be affected just because entries in your database are duplicated. Any errors in data entry or missing data can have far-reaching effects in the quality of information being extracted from the database. It could also mean profit loss. Resolving these inaccuracies can mean a very tedious job of matching one list against another, contacting clients and companies to update contact details, and could be extremely money-costing and time-consuming, but it can provide significant advantages for a company in the long term.
2. Data Collaboration
Proper data collaboration and integration across departments is very important . You may have all the information in your database but that is not enough. Even though all data resides within the company, it may remain un-meaningful or without use if data is scattered across different departments. Proper sorting and integration of information can be greatly benefited by the sales team in terms of delivering individual customer needs and wants. Additionally, it is a must to update data in your CRM software in order to avoid duplication of tasks; avoiding embarrassing episodes for your employees.
3. Data Analysis
A detailed analysis of customer data in your CRM software will generally help you shorten response time to market changes. It will give you insight into their needs and wants, helping you analyse customers’ buying patterns. This will allow you to better align your products and services with your customers’ needs.
Business intelligence also relates to results of daily business decisions and does not merely encompass analysis of data itself. Your CRM Software would help you monitor customer interactions such as past and present purchases, product or service inquiries through buying patterns, etc. This will allow you to keep track of your business performance; giving you the edge to be always on top of the situation, anticipate customer needs and avert customer attrition before it even happens.
Accurate and up-to-date information in your CRM Software will ensure that your marketing team is always in the know, allowing you to pick and target better prospects. Therefore, allowing you to improve marketing campaigns, attain a higher response rate from your campaigns, identify reasons and solutions to address occurrences of customer attrition.
Last but not the least, being aware of external market conditions is essential. Being aware of market trends allows you to react swiftly to possible changes in market trends. Understanding customer behaviour through the use of your products and services will enable your company to improve its service to its current client base as well as to target new business more effectively.
IT on Tap’s CRM Software is lightning fast, efficient and easy-to-use to help you improve business intelligence and gain the competitive edge that you need. Go to http://www.itontap.com/ and start getting that edge now!
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Business Intelligence Solutions -Advantages of Business Intelligence Tools
Business Intelligence Tools are computer-oriented methods that help in extracting, analyzing and identifying business information, such as sales returns by products or other allied incomes and costs.
The latest business intelligence tools help in efficient decision making in business processes. Therefore, they can also be considered a decision support system. Often the words “business intelligence” and “competitive intelligence” are used interchangeably. The reason is that they both help in crucial decision making. Business intelligence tools use innovative technologies, application systems and processes to evaluate internal formatted information and business methods. On the other hand, competitive intelligence assimilates, disseminates and analyzes information by maintaining a newsworthy focus on an enterprise’s competitors.
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The decision that entrepreneurs and organizations need to make here is about a business intelligence approach they should choose. It is important to highlight the method that will not only help in gaining visibility but will also deliver a predictive insight. Businesses often ponder whether to invest in a new reporting procedure or enhance the existing one.
It is important to realize that any tools incorporated in business should result in a harmonious combination of sales, procurement, order fulfillment, finance, accounting and many others. Therefore, enterprises require a holistic business intelligence solution. The BI solutions offered today by service providers have a similar approach. They comprise a comprehensive application system of built-in BI tools that offer role-based and sensitive intelligence for all. It includes the front line, mid level and even top level management and is able to operate in diverse environments.
IDC conducted an extensive study, “Worldwide Business Analytics Software 2010-2014 Forecast and 2009 Vendor Shares,” that highlights that the requirement for Business Intelligence solutions will keep increasing throughout 2014. This report also states that demand and sustained growth of business analytics, Cloud Computing and the emergence of SaaS technologies are motivating BI solutions. Today, end users are more aware of the advantages of BI solutions and business analytics. This is evident from publicized instances highlighting social networking sites, large retailers, intelligence agencies, search engines and other enterprises that create and evaluate huge information.
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A Super combination of Web and human Resource: Business intelligence
In most of the organization the data mining combined tool with a business intelligence has made the administrative processes very easy and decision system very much accurate. Whatever be the process either for research of competition or abstracting the data from various resources to make in use of business or developing an idea of improving customer organizing relationship. This first releases the load of staff which makes them think independently and create new ideas. Making use of various latest application and tools it enables the user to take right decision of the process.
The sole reason for the application of business intelligence in any of industry is to facilitate the user and centralize the process so that it can be triggered from a single point. Including a wide range of application along with web technologies enables the business intelligence to take control of various data and databases spread over different platform. These facilities has made the business intelligence as one of the mostly used and important process in organization.
The business intelligence is generally termed as decision support system by organizing peoples because making use of its applications and technologies not only speed up the decision process but also give advice on a better solution to a problem. We can compare the business intelligence with the competitive intelligence as BI uses the advance application and web technologies in order to create the decision where as competitive intelligence use the data to analyze and relate within them.
If we see some of the example of Business intelligence services which are mostly used so we will find Excel as top of them it not only facilitate the business like finance and data mining but also gives the user a better and easy way to access that. The tool is so simple and easy to use that a novice can also use it without any hassle and take very good results from them.
Some other tools like OLAP and Data mining tolls are also the key part for making Business intelligence a success. Where the OLAP helps in finding co-relation in between the data and Data mining to point out Result specific data these three tolls combined made it super effective tool.
Nitesh Patel is a blogger and also media partner of various website for work related to content, wordpress setup and customization if you want more advice or need help with content and wordpress you can contact me on My website Redefining Technology
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All You Need to Know About Business Intelligence/
Cooking School Houston, a Texas-based institute, is renowned for its outstanding professionalism and quality culinary education. The policy of Cooking School Houston focuses on factors such as individual attention to students, generosity, and education of superior quality. The school is built on the foundation of culinary history, tradition, kitchen skills, and business intelligence. Many people think that productivity is about how much work you can do. But if you are doing a lot of work and getting very few results, then how is that being productive? Sure you may be busy. But, and this is very important – being busy does not equal productivity.
One thing that certainly worked well as a lot of people have something called paid surveys. They gave me a lot of companies, and many people have seen great success in paid surveys.
_____________________________________ Keep in mind that the feedback form which you can extract the response slope poorly designed customer. make a good product is balanced. Ask guests for suggestions on improving the hotel.
Many IT business survey found that most do not have a mobile IT strategy. Similarly, the results showed no knowledge in this area. Many leading companies have already hacked the wireless network over the past few years, so the customer’s credit card information stolen. Tools posted on the Internet has made war driving affordable and comfortable for people who want to steal corporate data.
Piesie easier!
Financial Rewards Arrive with sales background, like me, almost inconceivable to me that it was not financially reward high production. Most people do not come with a sales background. In most activities, financially profitable production of a foreign concept. In areas where performance easily measured as the number of widgets sold, company share prices, earnings, etc.
If the participants by email or a meeting in blogs recently posted a link to an object or what is important that users of Facebook and SharePoint users can access this information immediately. In addition, advanced email and calendar management features make planning easier than ever. establish cooperation in Word 2010
Word a wide range of advanced editing tools for images, including image enhancement, background removal, the image layout options, and artistic impact.
Cutters: a visual control that the user can easily and quickly filter data interactively, floating over the network, information and act as filters, snap of the reports, dynamic graphs, and cube functions. PowerPivot: data analysis add-in that allows users to model and analyze large amounts of data quickly. Excel macros also provide additional support. This includes support for the registry items and table to complete the transition from VBA macros in Excel, without losing the ability to create, edit and run macros in Excel 4.
Is just a big advantage that the supply chain coordination. B2B e-commerce does not jeopardize the time, quality and reliability of its products. These are just some of the key differences between B2B and business-to-consumer e-commerce.
a large amount of B2B systems integration organization and the expensive ones and business associates in the B2C e-commerce security, etc. Spent raising requires a lot of questions about the If someone was to compare the small and medium enterprises to large-scale operations to see a number of differences. These differences may, in relation to the size, scale of operations, capital base, the number of employees and the amount of benefits. In all of these general categories of a society must weigh any small or medium size business.
Each day, one can find a secretary, personal assistant, office manager or IT professional who can conduct most of the day, little or not at all true of human relationships. Individuals in today’s society we find that communication by email, internet chat, internet dating, text messaging, and even the phone replaced the previous face-to-face communication. These people could go to the gas station, and never be affected by other people, you can go to the store and use self-checkout, in order to avoid interaction with sales staff and can not do their banking through Internet or ATM.
Corporate or industrial espionage concerns the theft of trade secrets or information, activities, blackmail, bribery, or even surveillance equipment and computer support, using a variety of technological surveillance and collection activities. This course, to identify differences in industrial espionage and human intelligence gathering is often erroneously, as a well defined line between these two disciplines. As a result, the dark streets of the road and misinterpreted the definition, many collectors have been isolated from the human intelligence gathering competitive intelligence. What must be remembered that the buyer only after some innocent people as a conversation, and does not require the individual to do anything that could be construed as illegal.
Sweep accounts allow companies to move the overnight cash investments at the end of each end of the day. regular cash management structure 4. Evaluate the same management structure routine examination should be conducted to identify processes that need to be improved, provides a measure of tracking data and provide an assurance that the firm conviction. Guest examine how the banks managed bank cash, cost and return on investment. Sprint?s Future: No iDEN, LTE (Maybe) ,
victims (large) companies working to develop new business. The objectives of the same types of companies.
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All You Need to Know About Business Intelligence/
It is complete, your masterpiece report. Not only does it meet your customer’s expectations, it blows them out the water, all they want is beautifully summarised and displayed in a myriad of ways. Oracle Applications, Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle Financials, Oracle Reports, Oracle Discoverer
The biggest brand stores represent only a small part of the sandwich together, but Subway, Pret Manger and the Bakers Oven brand account, an estimated 72. 2% of 10 stores by the number of output and 79.
All these unique technologies are packed together in one cool package. Integration of all these packages are built by SAP, the total cost of implementation down significantly. Components of this complex business scenarios of SAP NetWeaver and NetWeaver easily synchronize it with the necessary flexibility. SAP enterprise modeling, and thus a better test, standard SAP R / 3 provides a very different scenario from.
Hours of service are asked to make an offer to be closer to the world clock. input in response to all this, a new strategy was prepared, the execution was carried out. strategy has created four separate secretarial positions.
Automation of certain business processes to the ultimate goal of BPM. However, not all processes should be automated. Advanced BPM tools allow the modeling of descriptive norms do not only models, but the hierarchy of the organization, metadata and business. Once all the material needed for the model after the automatic selection of appropriate procedures.
MAS 500 helps you to automate all areas of business management, and maximize productivity and efficiency. Why MAS 500? operational efficiency and ability to handle large transaction volumes
Completely complex process automation
The open architecture allows you to customize MAS 500 applications. These applications are scalable to meet changing business needs.
a social responsibility in the business world, to live with others, many problems and challenges, as we are and who they are dealing with people as we can. Negative things occur in the workplace because of someone else’s actions, I mean, we can take care of yourself, and sow anger, others point of view or try to understand and respond accordingly.
And do not listen – they tend to resent interference is a problem if you cut them into thinking. However, once they catch their attention would be cut by summarizing what you say and you can get back control. If you say you are a bitter disappointment Jane So, for example, tried to cut his own thought process, you should use a few words in their full.
In other words, people in departments like HR and finance need to become an entrepreneur. With that in mind, let’s look at three ways you can use communication to add value, if you work in a functional department or not. \r\nmarket analysis of -
This module includes Sage MAS 90 and MAS 200 payroll, direct deposit, electronic information, federal and state eFiling and reporting, Abra HR, Abra Payroll, Abra Attendance, and Sage Payroll Services. U”zleti Intelligence – know the business inside and make smart decisions and another key to success.
before exploring the essence of human intelligence (human intelligence), the correlation between Competitive Intelligence (CI), one must understand the various forms of business and gather information about the person and may be related. The most widely referred to in the explanation of competitive intelligence, acquisition of public information available on the company’s competitors to get a clear benefit to individuals in business. The acquisition of critical information to competitors, such as strategic decisions, financial performance and productivity, to name a few, such as competitor intelligence.
Among the different ERP software the most famous and Sage MAS 90 ERP, Sage MAS 200 ERP, or simply known as MAS 90 and MAS 200. This solution was developed by Sage Software, one of the largest companies in the world to develop business software. Both MAS 90 and MAS 200 software is most recommended CPA from other applications in its class. These are often called Management and Accounting Software Solutions that make their feature-rich ERP system.
The first will be effective, the desired outcome of performance management systems must be able to make better decisions and strategic operations, which in turn will increase your business revenue. It may be difficult to measure the short term, another way to justify your investment will be in terms of personal time problem. Through effective performance management solution for your staff will have better access to information and tools for operations and reporting.
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Business Competition Best Practices: Win Loss Research
Frequently I am asked “how do you get information about the competition?” Most people are surprised when I tell them that getting useful competitive intelligence is actually the easiest part of managing successful business competition. One of the best methods to gain valuable competitive intelligence is so simple, straightforward, and productive that I have put it on my list of Business Competition Best Practices: Win Loss Research.
The benefits that win loss research routinely delivers include:
o Increasing your rate of successful wins in competitive sales situations
o Enhancing your product management and development initiatives
o Reducing the level of uncertainty involved in sales forecasting
o Strengthening top and bottom line results for your business
o Improving the efficiency of your sales cycle process
o Setting the stage for future business growth
Win loss research is a succinct, guided discussion with decision makers and who have been involved in your recent win and loss sales decisions. The goal is to learn what key distinctions they saw between you and your competitors, the importance of those distinctions and the value they assigned to each competitor. While the focus of this research is on gaining insight into how your competitors operate and how you fare in comparison, it is inevitable that you also gain valuable customer information in the process.
Win Loss Research drills down beyond standard pricing issues and gets into territories such as: decision process, sales team approach and professionalism, company reputation, product attributes, service issues, and handling of proposals. Although pricing information is involved, it should not be the centerpiece of the research unless it becomes apparent that it really was the key issue that drove the decision. The goal of Win Loss Research is to provide you with competitive insight you can act upon – actionable competitive intelligence – for sales process improvement and better results.
Typically this research is conducted either over the telephone or in a face-to-face interview. The latter is more common in places and cultures where that is the preferred communication modality. Getting the results that you want out of Win Loss Research is a combination of art and science; art being the skill of the researcher in eliciting the intelligence that you need; science being the development of a research guide that facilitates the discovery of actionable competitive intelligence.
As with almost anything worth doing, focusing on Critical Success Factors (CSFs) increases the likelihood that you will get what you need. For win loss research, focusing on the following CSFs will greatly increase your likelihood of obtaining productive competitor intelligence:
1) Selecting the optimal mix of win and loss opportunities to research is a reasonably complex task which must be done correctly to ensure that you are gaining insight from the target markets that matter most.
2) Development of a stimulating research survey that operates as a guide rather than a questionnaire is the backbone to outstanding results.
3) Using trained researchers who are skilled at eliciting useful information will usually provide more actionable intelligence.
Perhaps not surprising, the tone and quality of the initial research request can make or break your ability to get robust participation.
A common pitfall among companies that report doing win loss research is that they have their employees, typically the sales representatives, perform the research. You do need to have your sales people find out what happened. This should precede Win Loss Research which goes beyond the limited conversation from your sales reps’ debriefing. However, if the problem emanates from the quality of your sales person’s professionalism, it is not likely that you will learn this critical piece of information unless you use other resources for your research. It defies human behavior to think that the customer will feel comfortable being candid with a sales rep who has not met their expectations or that the sales rep will be candid in passing along information that may be construed as unfavorable to them.
An extraordinary thing about win loss research is that any size or category of company should be able to implement this as an ongoing business practice and see steady gains in their customer acquisition and sales. This form of research is not particularly costly or difficult to do, yet it does take a certain willingness to expose yourself to news that may make you uncomfortable at times.
One of the most frequent comments our researchers hear is a compliment to our clients for taking the time to learn and improve from their experience. Once you establish a practice of doing win loss research routinely and take action on the results, your company will realize the benefits of implementing this business competition best practice.
Celeste Bishop is President of Bishop Market Resources a marketing services agency that focuses on classic and web related competition. For more ideas check Brain Food for Competitive Intelligence.
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