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

FINAL WORD OF ADVICE

If you are responsible for customer intelligence or customer analytics in your organization, one of the most business-critical aspects is to find some good partners in your organization who will be your sponsors. Your sponsors are the people who must support and in the future will make strategic decisions based on your findings. Try to see things from their perspective; there you are with all your vision of data, information, and decision support; why should they trust you? You should prepare properly for your first meetings and never promise more than you can deliver. The golden advice within all information management is: Think big, start small, and deliver quickly. We recommend that you at a minimum make a value-based segmentation or other analysis that can document your value from day 1 to your stakeholders and sponsors. Visions are good, but if you can deliver only on a long-term basis, your stakeholders will lose interest. In addition, you will lose touch and will never be able to implement customer analytics as a strategic asset since you will come nowhere near the strategy creation process.

If you have any questions, you are welcome to contact us via our homepage: www.basm-support.com. Now go to the flowchart in Exhibit 2.1 and use it for guidance in determining which of the four value disciplines you should pursue as a company. Good luck!

NOTE

1. F. F. Reichheld et al., The Loyalty Effect: The Hidden Force behind Growth, Profits, and Lasting Value ...