Business Strategy & Business Outcomes using Business Insights from Data & Analytics

Business outcomes using Business Insights from Data and Analytics – A component of Digital Services

What does this article address??As a Board Director or C-Suite Executive, you would have heard a lot about your competitors using technologies such as Big Data, Analytics, AI & ML for compelling competitive advantage.?This article helps you to understand the Business outcomes you can achieve with these technologies with “one sentence” bite-sized sample use cases for your business functions.

What does this article not address??I am a Business Leader who has built advanced Digital capabilities and Digital services Practice capabilities.?However, I have deliberately abstained from mention of technologies since the first focus should be on achieving the Business outcomes that matter.?In my experience of more than 3 decades in traditional IT, Cloud, and current Digital technologies, I have observed Business & Technology Executives get frustrated when they do not know the common customer and business purpose that is likely to be achieved with a technology enabled business transformation.

Are you looking to understand business outcomes possibilities to establish common purpose for your Digital services unit??If so, read on.?I would be grateful for any comments or recommendations.

Entrepreneurs start off with a unique Product or Service to resolve an existing problem that is not addressed by existing players in the industry.?The initial business insights are focused on Market research, Competitive insights, Product value analysis amongst others.?The insights are mostly external.?As these organisations emerge from Early stages to expand and scale, they need business insights to formulate an effective strategy to penetrate the market at the most optimal cost to achieve best possible business outcomes for customers, at margins that deliver the best ROI to investors in the best achievable timeframe.?It is especially true when going for Series A, B or C stages.?Business Insights enable development of an Informed and coherent business strategy that can be adapted to Market conditions.?To enable Business Insights, you need robust Data and Analytics.

Business Insights can be derived for every aspect of the business.?The ingredients required are:

(a)???What do we want to know about the Business??Past, Present and Future?

(b)??Data [aka the new GOLD] repository or library or catalogue

- What Data is available from systems within the company

- What Data available to the company through open sources

- What Data is sourced from external sources, at what costs, and technology costs

(c)???Reporting, Analytical tools to make sense of the Data.?AI & ML could come in later

(d)??Most importantly, the people.?Business strategist(s) with an Analytical mindset who can model the visualisation that is useful for decision making, planning and performance management purposes.?You would also need Data Architects, Data Engineers and Data Scientists but you can start small with a Minimum Value Product [MVP].

Let us look at some use cases then as to how you can have an informed Business Strategy or Effective performance management using Business Insights from Data & Analytics.

Sales, eCommerce & Marketing – This is the primary business of any organisation.?No organisation can survive without incoming cashflow to pay for the outgoing cashflow against Creditors, Suppliers, Employees, and others.??What could be your use cases for this business function?

If you have Digital or eCommerce systems, you can use Analytics from data to improve Leads generation.?You can use Analytics to determine which sales are from pure B2C vs. B2B or even B2B2B??If you have integrated your eCommerce with external Marketplaces, you use Data Analytics to assess the performance of your Marketplace channel.?You can use Analytics from data to maximise the volumes and value from sale of the products that are in demand or kick out products & services to avoid having an inventory stockpile.?You can use response analytics from your Marketing campaigns to enhance the campaign focus in subsequent rounds.?You can use Chatbot analytics to determine conversation from bots to a potential demand.

If you have a robust CRM system, you can use Analytics to assess Sales teams performance.?You can use Invoice analytics to assess and improve on the gap between what has been sold vis-à-vis what has been invoiced.?You can use Analytics to assess which customer engagements are profitable or growing or in decline.?You can use Analytics to assess which products or services are profitable or growing or in decline.?You can use Analytics to assess which Market segments or Regions are doing better.?You can use Analytics to assess Deals closing ratio, Deals win ratio to plan for the appropriate lead times and have focused Sales, Pre-sales, solution efforts.?

That is basic Sales & Marketing Analytics.?What if, you can combine data sources from external systems [eg., social media, website hits, market surveys, etc.] to understand macro-economic, micro-economic and competitive products data to plan for headwinds or tailwinds or drifts???That is when you make the ball-game shift from basic Analytics to Business Insights.?Are you ready to take the leap of faith to enhance Business outcomes for your organisation?

Customer Services, Retention & Experience – There must be an effective Post sales customer experience whether it is Products delivery, timeliness, quality, or the way it was delivered.?And if there was an offer of Products implementation and/or Ongoing maintenance and support services, the customer would expect Proactive monitoring [depending on product capability] as well as Reactive responsiveness, fix and periodic governance.?

If you have a Field service and/or Professional services management system, you can use Data & Analytics to ascertain the time to deploy a Field service Engineer, Implementation times, Post implementation issues to ensure ongoing and continuing service fulfilment improvements.?You can use Data & Analytics to determine if there are repeat customers because of high-quality implementations.?You can use Analytics to understand customer or subscriber churn causes and take steps to mitigate the churn.

If you have an integrated Contact centre and Service management system, you can use Data & Analytics to assess and improve response times, resolution times, perform root cause analysis and even introduce automated resolution if your products have Digital kit in them.?You can perform customer satisfaction surveys to continuously enhance the Quality of Services and Quality of Experience to your customers.

If your products have intelligence and remote connectivity enablement to enhance Aftermarket services, you can use proactive monitoring systems data for analytics and prevent an issue from occurring.?You can use Analytics to determine this from the data generated by the intelligence built into your products.?You can use Analytics to predict when your products are likely to fail and plan for spares and field service engineer availability to resolve the issue even before a customer knew it.?You can use Analytics of Product failures to improve the reliability of future products and/or upgrades by understanding the causes of failures.?

Manufacturing, Operations, Procurement, Logistics and Fulfilment – Operational improvements in this area has been the primary focus when ERP systems were introduced.??The introduction of modern-day IoT trackers and data interrogation capabilities have enabled significant cost efficiencies since ERP only dealt with Systems of Records as manually keyed in.?Here are some examples use cases.

You can use assembly line data analytics to understand the cause of product defects.?You can use quality inspection data analytics to accurately pinpoint the time when the defect came into the product.?You can use Procurement data analytics to improve discounts.?You can use Inventory and Production integrated analytics to plan optimal procurement timing.??You can use Sales volumes, Production volumes and Procurement data analytics to optimise inventory and Cash burn levels.?You can use shipment data analytics to improve time to deliver or fulfil an order.?You can use Logistics data analytics for future routes optimisation.

Finance, HR, IT and Legal support functions – Finance and Payroll processing were one of the first functions to be enabled with computerisation.?Here again, there are examples use cases how Data & Analytics could help.

You can use Accounts payable data analytics and Accounts receivables data analytics to narrow the gap and improve cashflow.?You can use Accounts receivable data analytics to perhaps provide incentives for those who pay on time.?You can use integrated data & analytics of Procurement data & Accounts payable data to detect frauds.?You can use HR case data analytics to pinpoint grievances and improve employee experience proactively.?Surprisingly, not many IT organisations drink their own champagne.?IT Incidents Data Analytics can be performed to accelerate resolution and/or reduce the incident volumes.?By using proactive IT systems & Cybersecurity monitoring, the events data analytics can not help to defend but also automate proactive offense.?By using data & analytics on legal T’s and C’s, the contract negotiation parameters could be narrowed down and even fast-tracked to improve customer and/or supplier contracting experience.

There are plenty of other use cases.?In Summary, you can use Data & Analytics to improve revenues, optimise your operating budget and improve your compliance posture.?Please contact if you are in need of assistance to shape your strategy using Digital capabilities.

About the Author

Jagadish is a Senior Executive leader & Digital evangelist, who has been successful at building and/or turnaround Practice capabilities, Presales/Sales enablement/Solution consulting capabilities for Application Services and IT Infrastructure Outsourcing services.?Jagadish has extensive and wide-ranging experience of Digital - Apps & Infra Transformation solutions achieving customer business outcomes thereby delivering high win rates. Prior to that, Jagadish has delivered large Outsourcing & Technology Transformation programmes.?

Jagadish has established a network of partnerships and collaborated with partners to achieve Digital transformation for customers.?He has used deep analytics, industry insight, competitive insights and business outcomes based consulting approach to deliver differentiated solutions.

Apart from speeches at major events, Jagadish has also written many articles on LinkedIn Pulse.

Acknowledgements: All learnings from Mentors, Colleagues, Customers, Partners and Knowledge forums gratefully acknowledged.