First of all, it is worth defining what analytics is in marketing, where and how it is used. Let’s build up the narrative from general methods of analysis to particular solutions.
The larger the company, the greater the variety of information at its disposal, which must be gathered from various sources. To understand what is going on with business, how processes inside it work, analysis of received data is necessary. For this purpose business intelligence systems are used. Their peculiarity lies in the fact that they are designed to process data and bring it to a universal form in order to draw up an integrated analytical report and work with it correctly later on.
Thus, business intelligence tools provide prompt access to data which reflects the current situation of the organization. For example, the volume of sales by regions and branches, their structure by products, etc. Also, such systems have the ability to visualize data in graphs, charts, etc.
For marketing business intelligence system is useful because it allows to process and analyze a large amount of information of the following nature:
- The structure of demand for the assortment presented, which products are sold in greater volume.
- Prevailing patterns of consumer purchases at the current moment in time to respond to changes in audience needs, make changes to the assortment, develop products or services that correspond to current trends.
- Comparison of conversions and sales intensity across channels and outlets, as well as changes in performance when applying variations in budget allocation and marketing promotion efforts.
Business intelligence is descriptive analytics.
The program shows the retrospective situation and allows to find out what can be improved in the current environment in marketing and sales activities and processes to increase business performance and return on investment. In other words, it reveals the problem areas within the business, but does not give an answer to what awaits the organization in the future in changing market conditions.
