results for ""
Below is a cache of http://www.1-for-all.com/PDF_wri/1-for-All_Marketing_-_InLineAnalytics.pdf. It's a snapshot of the page taken as our search engine crawled the Web.
The web site itself may have changed. You can check the current page or check for previous versions at the Internet Archive. Yahoo! is not affiliated with the authors of this page or responsible for its content.
INLINE ANALYTICS:
WHITEPAPER
WHITE PAPER
INLINE ANALYTICS:
DRIVING PROFITABILITY AT THE POINT OF
OPPORTUNITY
THE ALPHABLOX SOLUTION
Alphablox White Paper
InLine Analytics 2
TABLE OF CONTENTS
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY .................................................................................................... 3
INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................
4
The Quest for Profitability .................................................................................... 4
Three Obstacles .................................................................................................... 4
PROFITABILITY ................................................................................................................ 6
How is Profit Created? .........................................................................................
6
Anatomy of a Profitable Action ............................................................................
8
The Role of Analytics ...........................................................................................
9
THE PROBLEM: INTEGRATING ANALYTICS WITH BUSINESS PROCESSES .......................... 10
Old World Solutions Cannot Deliver ..................................................................
10
THE ALPHABLOX SOLUTION: INLINE ANALYTICS FOR OPTIMIZING PROFITABILITY ........
11
Analytics in All the Right Places .........................................................................
12
How Will InLine Analytics Benefit This Organization? ........................................... 14
CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................. 17 3
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Driving profitability has always been one of the most important objectives in business and has
become even more so in the age of eBusiness.
Profitability at the organization's bottom line is the result of countless minor actions taken by
decision makers at the front lines in front of customers, with partners, at employees' desks. But,
because traditional analytic solutions are best suited to delivering historical, narrowly- focused
information, most companies are unable to intervene and respond to business changes in real time.
Three obstacles to profitable actions emerge at the front lines:
> "Rear-view data," which takes days or weeks to reach the front lines
> Disconnected analysis, due to the levels of processing that separate the
decision maker from the data on which he/she needs to act
> A lack of perspective across all the people and transactions that the current
action will affect
Every organization attempts to use analytics to drive profitability, but existing tools isolate the
analytics, limiting their accessibility and effectiveness
By integrating analytics in line with business processes, the Alphablox solution removes these
obstacles, with concrete benefits for business, technical, and extranet audiences. The new Internet
infrastructure has interconnected employees, customers and suppliers, providing new linkages that
were previously invisible. Alphablox help companies capitalize on those linkages. Armed with InLine
Analytics from Alphablox, decision makers can immediately pursue their most profitable courses of
action under changing business conditions. 4
INTRODUCTION
THE QUEST FOR PROFITABILITY
The yardstick of business is profitability and, in today's uncertain economy, all eyes are on that
yardstick. Investors, officers, customers, employees, and partners all weigh a company's past and
current profitability in planning the future of their relationships with that company.
Profitability, in turn, has thousands of its own yardsticks throughout the organization. Did the
customer buy from us again? Do they pay us more when we deliver sooner? Can we deliver sooner?
Has this product made or lost money? In all corners of the enterprise, the goal of profitability is
paramount and better processes by which to manage are in great demand.
Yet, as business managers scramble to identify their most profitable opportunities, they begin to
realize how elusive current information can be. Their sales force automation (SFA) software is
powerful, but there is no way to link their customer relationship management (CRM) data to it.
Or, their enterprise resource planning (ERP) package is top-notch, but only the financial analysts
have access to it, causing significant delay in getting the information to the front lines.
Before long, managers begin to lament, "You mean that, with all of our investments in technology,
we still can't improve predictability and profitability in our business? How much longer must our
people on the front lines look in the rear-view mirror? What will it take for us all to climb out of our
silos and be able to see our profitable opportunities?"
THREE OBSTACLES
Imagine the sales representative of a pharmaceutical company as she poses a few common,
profit-motivated questions:
>
Which of my products sells the best?
>
To whom can I sell more units of that product today?
>
To whom can I sell more units of that product tomorrow? 5
To take the most profitable action, she needs to factor in several sources of business data:
> Data from her company's CRM system
> Historical transaction data
> External market and competitor information from third-party data providers
> The prescription behavior of one-half million doctors
> HMO data
> Cost/profitability data from her company's ERP system
To provide the answers to such questions, this reps company has put in place business intelligence
(BI) tools for ad hoc querying and reporting of data. Analysts in her company's IT and Finance
departments use some predefined combination of these tools to submit the sales representative's
query to their transactional systems and databases, and then isolate the portions of the resulting
data which are of interest to her. They deliver the information to her in the form of reports which she
can study, or exports to a spreadsheet which she manipulates on her own PC, sorting and regrouping
data for answers to her questions.
This solution is designed to provide the sales representative with data, but it is not designed to
optimize profitability. The existing approach can not help her pinpoint opportunities to sell more units
more profitably because of these three obstacles:
1.
REAR-VIEW DATA
By the time the sales representative has received the information, it is not current. It is
anywhere from a few days to a few months old and it offers her, at best, a rear view of her
most profitable opportunities from last week, not for today.
2.
DISCONNECTED, OFF-LINE ANALYSIS
Once she has the information in hand, the sales representative must still manipulate it.
Whether reviewing and understanding reports or manipulating spreadsheets, she has to
deal with the obstacle of being disconnected from the source of the data she needs and is
reliant on IT and Finance staffs to properly interpret and deliver on her requirements.
Furthermore, she has no way of writing back to the source of the data or of preserving and
sharing her analysis with other members of her team. 6
3.
LACK OF PERSPECTIVE ACROSS THE VALUE CHAIN
The sales representative also faces the obstacle of poor perspective. She takes actions
based on data from several "stovepipes," with little information on the interdependencies
of, say, CRM and ERP data. Without this perspective across the "value chain" the long
series of other transactions that her action will affect she is working in isolation. For
example, she can spend 30 minutes determining which physicians have received samples of
which products, yet not see data on which of those products is profitable, or on her
company's ability to deliver the product if the physician orders it.
From where the sales representative stands, these are all obstacles to her ability to pinpoint and
immediately pursue her most profitable opportunities.
With these obstacles in mind, we now explore the mechanics of profitable actions and the task of
better equipping the decision makers taking these actions.
PROFITABILITY
HOW IS PROFIT CREATED?
Profitable actions reducing costs, increasing revenue, improving quality, shortening time to market,
increasing customer retention occur all across the value chain. These actions occur at the point of
transaction; by many, diverse people across the value chain; in incremental actions; and,
via a collaborative effort.
AT THE POINT OF TRANSACTION AND
OPPORTUNITY
The "front line" is the point at which the
organization's profit is either gained or
lost: on the sales call, during the
stockholder's meeting, in creating next
year's budget, or at the end of the
assembly line. Throughou