Win with Advanced Business Analytics: Creating Business Value from Your Data

DATA SOURCES AND LOCATIONS

The simplest way to think about the data you will use for business analytics is that the data will be from either an internal or an external source. Look at Exhibit 4.3 and the sample types of data you might use, and it becomes fairly clear which would be considered internal (compiled from inside your company) and which would be considered external (compiled from outside of your company). Most internal data are inherent to an organization or derived from its infrastructure. For example, enterprise data warehouse, CRM history, orders management and billing systems that include Web data or transactional data would be examples of internal data. External data, in contrast, can be purchased from outside vendors and can include information such as

Exhibit 4.3 Example of Data That Can Be Valuable for Business Analytics

Web traffic	Mobile traffic	Sales operations data (talk time, number of calls, performance by rep, etc.)
Customer loyalty	Market share and wallet share	Web search keywords
Website satisfaction	Competitive intelligence	E-mail open rate and conversion
Product performance	New and returning customers: # and $	Product satisfaction
Sales	Economic trends	Market size/opportunity
Win-loss by channel	Customer focus group results	Media mentions/sentiment
Brand awareness and equity	Customer lifetime value	Revenue
Website and product usability metrics	Advertising copy testing	Concept test results
Customer demographics	Satisfaction with service ...