As I was working with a client last week on implementing our Business Intelligence (BI) tool, Manage Metrix, I was reminded of a fundamental truth:
Establish the proper data relationships so that you don’t come to incorrect conclusions or erroneous relationships.
Let me give you an example. In a multichannel business that has catalog and e-commerce, at a high level, the Internet channel may receive 50% or more of the sales. But without getting behind the numbers, we don’t really know the “sales drivers”. Here’s what I mean by sales drivers:
- What portion of the sales resulted because the new catalog was active and the customer used the Internet as a convenience?
- How many sales came from affiliate marketing?
- How many from paid versus organic search, etc.?
When we measure the click stream data and understand this better, are we measuring and giving credit to the catalog in an accurate way? If we don’t measure this correctly, we might conclude that the catalog – with its high costs - is not worth the expense. And if you discontinued the catalog, you might also suffer the decline in sales that the catalog represents to your total business.
In my opinion, the BI team has to have a lot of strategic experience to set up those proper relationships in order to help grow the business and find new directions in those data “tea leaves”.
Curt Barry is the President of F. Curtis Barry & Company, a multichannel operations and fulfillment consulting firm with expertise in multichannel systems, warehouse, call center, inventory, and benchmarking; learn more online at: http://www.fcbco.com.
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