Business Analytics for Sales and Marketing Managers: How to Compete in the Information Age

WHAT IS AN INFORMATION STRATEGY?

In this section we take a closer look at what an information strategy is in order to make the link between the company strategy and what decision support has to be produced. We also introduce different kinds of information, based on which kind of decision support this information is made to support. Finally, this section also gives insights on why so many customer analytics projects that are driven by the DW fail. Since customer analytics often sources its data from one or more DWs, this section is explicitly from a BI perspective. As you will learn, BI based on DW data is a very complex process, and there are important lessons to be learned.

First of all, we take a closer look at what an information strategy is. In the simplest form, an information strategy can be described as a list of all the knowledge and information that is required in order for a business strategy to be successful, including a plan of how to create this decision support or operational data. Adding a little complexity to this definition, an information strategy consists of three domains that have to be managed and aligned in order to use DW information successfully:

1. Business requirements. Without clear business requirements on the overall objectives of your company strategy or marketing plan, over time your business activities will end up as a patchwork based on what you used to do with no clear strategic direction. After all, there is no point in making a plan that has ...