ca. 30 Minuten
nach Wunsch auch mit VideocallBusiness Intelligence… what are we actually talking about!?
A Quick Guide in 6 episodes.
Today's topic – episode 6: In the context of a Business Intelligence project, there are many aspects to consider. To make the process a little easier for you, we defined 5 Golden Rules – based on the experience we gained during our eCommerce BI projects.
About this blog series
Business Intelligence. Is it baloney or a term that matters? Does it even concern me or will I have deleted the word from my vocabulary by tomorrow anyway? You’ve probably heard about it and read about it, but you may not have ever quite understood exactly what it means? Anyway – Business Intelligence surely is a term that leaves many people in a quandary. Maybe this is you? Then maybe we’ve got something for you: This Blog Series offers you some help by providing six successive blog articles about what we are actually talking about when we use the term Business Intelligence – based on our extensive BI-centered work in consulting and development for the online sector. For everyone who wants to know more, and in particular, for online retailers.
INDEX OF EPISODES
- Episode 1: What’s the use of Business Intelligence? Do I need that, too?
- Episode 2: BI Fundamentals – Metrics and KPIs
- Episode 3: Important Metrics for Successful eCommerce (I): Traffic, Average Session Duration, Conversion Rate, Average Order Value
- Episode 4: Important Metrics for Successful eCommerce (II): Sales Metrics, Cost-turnover Ratio, Return Rate, Customer Metrics, Repurchase Rate
- Episode 5: Important Metrics for Successful eCommerce (III): The Customer Lifetime Value Special
- Episode 6: 5 Golden Rules for your BI project – Drawing a Bottom line
5 Golden Rules for your BI project – Drawing a Bottom line
To provide you with some useful tips in this final episode of our blog series, we formulated five Golden Rules that can be helpful for your BI project’s successful implementation:
1. Without certain goals, every way is right – wherever it’s leading
All too often, we hear general and vague sentences like “BI is important for our company” or “we finally need BI now too”. But ‘BI’ alone will never be an end in itself nor will it solve your problems autonomously nor generate higher revenues. The intelligence is in your company’s employees, strategies, products, shop and BI service provider. So: Formulate concrete questions to implement your BI project in a goal-oriented way! What should work differently/better by the time the solution is finalized? Which questions do I want to be able to answer? Which decisions do I want to make, or support, by means of the BI solution? The answers won’t only vary based on different companies, but also based on each individual BI user’s function. As soon as the goals are defined, you can confidently hit the road with your BI project – knowing you will arrive safely at your destination.
2. Proper expectation management protects from disappointment
Before a BI project starts, there should be some clear communication concerning the expectations of the project’s participants and the BI solution’s future beneficiaries. Again, formulating concrete requirements and questions proves itself to be very helpful: What is the system supposed to achieve? What should change respectively get better? What do I expect from the new solution? For a lot of people will often have only their own issues in mind, regarding them as the highest priority, but then losing sight of the overall context, and so an in-depth communication becomes so very critical. In one or more workshops, the concretely worded expectations of all project participants can be evaluated and prioritized in relation to their possibilities for implementation (is the required data existing and is it of the necessary quality at all?) as well as eventual overlaps. Thus, a comprehensive set of goals is defined. The results are brought together in a first project plan developed by the BI service provider that every participant should sign off on. Next, a project manager should be nominated among the customer company’s employees. This project manager is primarily responsible for the customer side and will decide in case of potential changes of plan, if and when it comes to postponements in the planned process. Additionally, he or she is responsible for the company’s information flow. This way, inappropriate expectations can be prevented and clear communication is ensured.
3. Insufficient term definitions cause chaos
As previously mentioned in the course of introducing the different kinds of sales metrics, every department has its own definitions of company-relevant metrics – and certainly, all of them are right. Nevertheless, we have the problem of lacking comparability, and thus, the inefficient consequence that it will repeatedly result in time-consuming discussions about the validity of numbers in meetings of different departments that ultimately don’t lead anywhere. What it should really be about is the valid interpretation of numbers and the creation of action recommendations! Therefore, at the beginning of every BI project, the most important terms like sales (net/gross/delivery/shipping/return sales measured at the order/invoice/shipping date), new customer and return rate (calendaric or historic?) should be defined by the project team and communicated throughout the organization. The clearer those definitions are, the faster your BI service provider can implement your needs. After the definition phase, the implementation of company-wide reporting follows. Now, there will only be one consistent definition!
4. Data quality beats colourful dashboards
Most BI tools offer the possibility to create fancy dashboards using all colours of the rainbow: lines, bars, columns, pie charts. But what is important for the Dashboard is the validity of data – not its colorfulness. Leave the color questions until after each department has verified and approved the data. Keep your eyes on the important things in order to prevent yourself from losing the overview trapped between dusky pink and mint green! Even after the first validation of data quality, it must be constantly reviewed as the project progresses. A capable BI system automatically provides the actual status concerning this matter in a data quality dashboard. Based on this, you ‘only’ have to make the responsible employees solve the issue in the case of a data quality problem. Take a look at this example from our practical experience: Instead of measuring the sale of beer in bottles or litres, a retailer accidentally listed the unit “millimetres” for a newly introduced type of beer. The quantity of sales went through the roof. An intolerable situation that thoroughly damaged the quality of many metrics. But the retailer’s BI Solution was a good one and their Data Quality Dashboard displayed the error, so it could be fixed in time.
5. Take small steps!
As soon as you decide on a BI Solution and the internal BI team starts working, everything has to, of course, proceed as fast as possible. Preferably, finished yesterday. We like finishing our projects yesterday – but not everything. Together with the customer, we prioritize where we can achieve the most with minor effort and which goals should be started on, and in which order. Thus, we quickly ensure part of the system’s readiness for use and, most importantly, enable the users’ quicker identification with the BI Solution and all the “new” numbers. Markets, customers and current business questions change rapidly, and require quick adjustments: a new data source, a new department, a new market, new issues, a new competitor or a new investor? A good BI Solution can provide the answers. So – what are we actually talking about when we say “Business Intelligence”? We are talking about your data’s complete aggregation and integration as well as, based on this integration, the holistic analysis of your business processes – with the target of optimizing your company’s strategic direction. Business Intelligence is your basis for decisions of all kinds and it enables you to react to business change on your own – rapidly and in a goal-oriented way.
Now it's your turn. Are you really already exploiting the full potential of your data? We offer you a free initial analysis of your data structure to reveal hidden potential. Simply fill out the form, arrange a call and discover potential.
