This is the second in a series of BI-related posts and it deals with what platforms are being selected and what objectives are being served with SMB Business Intelligence customers. Despite a much shorter history than packaged BI, our survey found a higher level of Cloud-based than packaged BI applications within the SMB respondent base. You may want to open it up to full size as the charts are a little crowded.
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This is a snapshot of data from the recently-completed "SMB Business Intelligence Solutions - Adoption and Trends".
Coverage includes SMB Primary Research conducted in US, UK, Germany, Australia, China, India to understand the current and planned adoption of business intelligence solutions, types of solutions including cloud-based, features desired, as well as barriers to adoption. This data only covers a slice of the US market. Click through - detailed charts are best viewed full screen:
SMB Business Intelligence Importance from Techaisle on Vimeo.
It is always great to see someone who is really smart and knows what they are talking about...also kind of makes you wonder if your E-Trade account is up to the task and even if it is, whether it might be just like picking up pennies in front of an oncoming steamroller...click to view
Before you attempt any modelling you should first look at the inputs and outputs that you want to go in to your modelling. Here is the matrix:
What you need to do is to make a laundry list of the variables (inputs) that affect the output. Typically in a marketing company one would look at sales as the output and a whole lot of variables as inputs. Let me look at a few examples for these cells.
1. Measurable-Controllable Variables
GRPs of your brand through TV advertising are measurable and controllable.
2. Measurable-Not-Controllable
Inflation is measurable but not controllable
3. Not-measurable – Not Controllable
The amount of investments made by your competition in dealer incentives is neither easy to measure accurately nor can you have any control. But this activity impacts the sales of your brand.
4. Not Measurable-Controllable
Not measurable generally refers to qualitative issues which are quite often measured by a pseudo variable, for example: Quality of your salesperson.
In your business environment if the majority of your input variables are in Cells 1 and 2, and you feel that these make a big impact, then modelling will be successful. If not, and many variables are in Cells 3 and 4, modelling will not be a success.
Most companies do not undertake this simple preliminary exercise of classifying the variables that impact their business and then hit potholes throughout the design testing and implementation.
Unclassified variables are veritable landmines. Watch out for them.
Dr. Cooram Ramacharlu Sridhar (Doc)
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