K-Praxis - Topic: Text Analysis - Sales and Marketing Intelligence: The Need for Integrating Textual Analytics with Traditional Solutions-Print

Sales and Marketing Intelligence: The Need for Integrating Textual Analytics with Traditional Solutions
December 18, 2003

As many established CRM and Business Intelligence players, as well as niche vendors, start offering sales and marketing solutions with advanced data mining, analytics and reporting capabilities; the necessary incorporation of text-based analytics is conspicuous by its absence. This analysis provides a detailed survey of sales and marketing intelligence markets and offers a set of recommendations to businesses aiming to migrate to next level of sales and marketing automation. This report also outlines a framework to integrate context-based textual analytics with sales and marketing analytics in order to leverage text-based information to distil actionable intelligence and insights.

Sales and Marketing Analytics Solutions: Key Ingredients

Sales and Marketing analytics solutions should be able to provide actionable information to the sales and marketing departments, enabling them to measure the efficacy and progress of the sales and marketing campaigns by supplying reporting capabilities that can slice and dice data in real time, as well as historically. Such solutions should, at the same time, allow them to tap into each other's information-basket (e.g., sales borrowing insights from marketing and vice versa) to work cohesively. Most of the vendors - whether niche or general business, Enterprise Software, CRM or Business Intelligence vendors - do provide some coverage of both the marketing and sales analytics. Here are the key components of these solutions:

Sales Analytics Solutions

A sales automation solution with intelligent analytical and reporting capabilities should be able to provide the following advantages:

Identify and analyze sales from basic data points: time, sales channels, sales rep, customer-segments, territories, products and industries.
Revenue projection and forecasting based on the key data points.

Provide sales pipeline forecasting on the basis of pipeline status, propensity to buy and the pipeline size.

Analyze sales data from a "cross-sell" and an "up-sell" point of view

Analyze, track, compare and manage leads: follow leads from generation to sales conclusion

Analyze lead qualification: across lead sources, lead types, lead profiles and lead opportunity sizes

Analyze win-loss on the basis of deal and lead attributes, reasons, sales steps, sales reps

Providing alerting capabilities, in the event of sales pipe line discrepancies

Analyze and correlate historical data with present sales trends

Analyze sales cycle Time by various data points

Analyze gains and losses

Chart comparative revenue growth

Analyze sales team productivity based on progress, closing and qualifying abilities, sale value and time

At the heart of a sales intelligence solution lies the ability to derive customer-centric insights from volumes of sales data. A sales intelligence solution, therefore, should be able to provide targeted analysis to understand the sales processes, successes and failures.

Marketing Analytics Solutions

A marketing automation solution with advanced analytical and reporting capabilities should be able to provide the following advantages:

Provide real-time analysis of various marketing channels and marketing campaigns
Correlate and help analyze ROI across channels and campaigns - from email campaigns to direct marketing campaign, online campaigns to call center and trade show campaigns and channels
Analyze marketing spend in relation to sales intelligence and competitive landscape
Monitor marketing team performance
Measure brand and channel effectiveness

	Making sense of online textual information and information management technologies

	Sales and Marketing Intelligence: The Need for Integrating Textual Analytics with Traditional Solutions December 18, 2003 As many established CRM and Business Intelligence players, as well as niche vendors, start offering sales and marketing solutions with advanced data mining, analytics and reporting capabilities; the necessary incorporation of text-based analytics is conspicuous by its absence. This analysis provides a detailed survey of sales and marketing intelligence markets and offers a set of recommendations to businesses aiming to migrate to next level of sales and marketing automation. This report also outlines a framework to integrate context-based textual analytics with sales and marketing analytics in order to leverage text-based information to distil actionable intelligence and insights. Sales and Marketing Analytics Solutions: Key Ingredients Sales and Marketing analytics solutions should be able to provide actionable information to the sales and marketing departments, enabling them to measure the efficacy and progress of the sales and marketing campaigns by supplying reporting capabilities that can slice and dice data in real time, as well as historically. Such solutions should, at the same time, allow them to tap into each other's information-basket (e.g., sales borrowing insights from marketing and vice versa) to work cohesively. Most of the vendors - whether niche or general business, Enterprise Software, CRM or Business Intelligence vendors - do provide some coverage of both the marketing and sales analytics. Here are the key components of these solutions: Sales Analytics Solutions A sales automation solution with intelligent analytical and reporting capabilities should be able to provide the following advantages: Identify and analyze sales from basic data points: time, sales channels, sales rep, customer-segments, territories, products and industries. Revenue projection and forecasting based on the key data points. Provide sales pipeline forecasting on the basis of pipeline status, propensity to buy and the pipeline size. Analyze sales data from a "cross-sell" and an "up-sell" point of view Analyze, track, compare and manage leads: follow leads from generation to sales conclusion Analyze lead qualification: across lead sources, lead types, lead profiles and lead opportunity sizes Analyze win-loss on the basis of deal and lead attributes, reasons, sales steps, sales reps Providing alerting capabilities, in the event of sales pipe line discrepancies Analyze and correlate historical data with present sales trends Analyze sales cycle Time by various data points Analyze gains and losses Chart comparative revenue growth Analyze sales team productivity based on progress, closing and qualifying abilities, sale value and time At the heart of a sales intelligence solution lies the ability to derive customer-centric insights from volumes of sales data. A sales intelligence solution, therefore, should be able to provide targeted analysis to understand the sales processes, successes and failures. Marketing Analytics Solutions A marketing automation solution with advanced analytical and reporting capabilities should be able to provide the following advantages: Provide real-time analysis of various marketing channels and marketing campaigns Correlate and help analyze ROI across channels and campaigns - from email campaigns to direct marketing campaign, online campaigns to call center and trade show campaigns and channels Analyze marketing spend in relation to sales intelligence and competitive landscape Monitor marketing team performance Measure brand and channel effectiveness