Business Intelligence

How do you identify your software development priority in times of pandemic as several companies are currently experiencing its repercussions.  As the Prime Minister said, some are “on pause” while others are unable to find the necessary employees to meet demands.

One thing remains though, what did not perform well before the pandemic, is still not performing well during the pandemic and will not perform well afterwards.  However, we will return to performance issues in a context of pandemic and economic downturn in a future post.

Of course, you could also embark on the Digital Transformation project, which we have already discussed at length in previous posts, or on an Agile Transformation project, i.e. the integration of Agility into the enterprise. These projects are certainly very worthwhile, but we have something else in mind for you.

Identifying software development priorities in times of pandemic?

For some companies, it will be a question of doing more with less, while for others, it will simply be a question of doing better?

Indeed, any IT manager will seek either a gain in productivity or a gain in performance.  However, there is a third path that is less obvious but certainly just as profitable, the path of Intelligence (not artificial, that is ?).

So, if your company is on idle, why not take advantage of this time to recover Business Intelligence? Such a Business Intelligence-oriented software development project, while requiring good thinking, will not sideline your critical applications. Moreover, whether it is Financial or related to your Customers, this Business Intelligence will prove to be an invaluable competitive advantage in the recovery.

Now, is Business Intelligence identified as a software development priority in your company? It should.

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What to choose between implementing a CRM system and a Customer Service in terms of development and investment priority? And why should we choose, is not your CRM software the foundation on which Customer Service is based?

And for what purpose do we implement a CRM? To serve Sales and support the growth of the business or to serve the Customer and improve the quality of the Customer Experience? Or to inform Marketing to guide them in the development of new products that meet the new needs of customers and allow the company to increase its turnover?

For all this, right? So, “foundation” is perhaps the key word here!

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According to Harvard Business Review, before thinking about AI and Big Data, companies should think Data Strategy because cross-sectoral studies show that, on average, less than half of an organization’s structured data is actively used to make decisions and less than 1% of its unstructured data is analyzed or used.

More than 70% of employees have access to data that they should not, 80% of the time of analysts is devoted to the discovery and preparation of data. Data breaches are common, unreliable datasets are spreading in silos, and enterprise data technology often does not live up to demand.

Having a Chief Data Officer (CDO) and a data management function is excellent but not necessarily possible in all organizations. On the other hand, each organization should, at its level, define a coherent strategy for the governance, analysis and deployment of information assets (data).

In short, a Data Strategy!

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According to a recent New Vantage Partners study, many large firms are still lagging behind and not making the most out of the 3 sources of actionable data for the benefit of their company. However, everyone is gargling Big Data and Artificial Intelligence in recent years; amazing, no?

Even more, according to another Forrester study, 73% of enterprise data is not used!

The good news is that all companies can still do well with the implementation of a Data Strategy. Especially since the main obstacle to implementing such a Data Strategy is the “People”, according to New Vantage Partners.

Towards a data-driven enterprise culture

Indeed, the same study reveals that for nearly 50% of companies, Personnel is the main source of resistance to change towards a data-driven enterprise culture.

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While diving in Big Data and Artificial Intelligence is booming, many companies are still struggling to take full advantage of their business data, leaving dormant an underutilized asset with enormous potential.

Which is surprising to say the least since the vast majority of companies have implemented technologies that have accumulated billions of billions of data over the last two or three decades. We are talking about Big Big Data.

Your business data, an underused or underestimated asset?

A recent New Vantage Partners survey of 60 large companies, reviewed by Harvard Business Review, revealed that the majority of these companies have plunged into the world of analytics for a long time but very few have actually implemented a data-driven enterprise culture.

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So the combination Big Data plus IoT will enable predicting and personalizing in real-time Clients Relationships, do risks analysis, redesign products by extrapolating the impact of some functionalities, offer custom heath care, reduce maintenance costs, up date your website in real-time, identify new opportunities, etc.

Or so they say!  Why?  How?

Big Data is basically the analysis of astronomical quantity of data so to extrapolate patterns and therefore predict behaviours, be it consumers or machines, consumer behaviour and satisfaction or performance and durability, etc.

So if you put together,  Big Data plus IoT, you now have access to the physical world of connected objects, and to data from M2M (Machine to Machine) relationships but also M2P / P2M (Person to Machine).

The more Big Data plus IoT will accumulate data over the longer period of time, the more its predictions will be right and sound…

And this formidable combination of Big Data plus IoT is already running at full speed as we speak, changing our lives even though we are not aware of it. Having doubts?  Well, read this carefully:

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The main Big Data problem today is that data still has to be labelled and categorized manually and this is what keeps the marvels of Big Data out of reach for most enterprises. Some may argue there might be an even bigger Big Data problem for businesses operating in th real world.

Big Data is getting… well, pretty big, especially when coupled with IoT. It is expected to change the landscape of Marketing, and of the way businesses do business, by enabling predictability of sales and customers’ needs and expectations, thanks to real-time analysis and visualizations of huge amount of structured and unstructured data gathered from the digital realm (mobile apps, web, website, social media, etc.).

And that’s great if you’re a large company with large resources, with big budgets and big clients, mostly operating in the digital world and producing huge amount of data to dive into so to extract those Marketing Intelligence pearls that will provide you with a competitive edge.

Many predict that Big Data-savvy will be a must of the next generation CMOs’ successful profile.

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Most companies, even if they don’t know it, already have way much more data than they can efficiently handle; they are literally drowning under data! So, do you believe the Big Data promise? That it’ll make a difference in your business performance and profits?  Not so evident!

But first, let’s see what we are talking about?  What is Big Data?

And when did it turn out to be BIG?

The true nature of Data and the Big Data promise

Data comes in two forms: structured and unstructured. When you join the two, it becomes Big, really BIG.

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Evidently, considering the massive investments required and made in IT today, purchase decisions and suppliers selection must go through Finance and sometimes even through, Board of Direction. The decision of a custom software development for an application application falls under this type of investment and the weight of this responsibility is a myth, in our opinion; the 3rd myth in our series of custom software development.

Therefore, in this context of collegiality decision-making, nobody bears on its own the weight and responsibility (the shame) of decisions, sometimes dire of consequences. And this concept of shared responsibility is becoming somewhat a generalized entrepreneurial culture in Western societies, for the better and the worst. A great many thinks that the reign of commercial software reflects such an era… and entrepreneurial culture.

Tell me what motivates you…

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Even though it might look so, it’s not necessarily true; and some questions about it must be revisited from time to time? So, how to assess the gain of Tablets for the Mobile Workforce?

I know, I know, you must think: « Come on, are you serious? ». In 2015?  But in fact, even though everybody has a mobile device today, it’s not crystal clear whether it’s really useful or even necessary.  More than often, and many have witnessed it, mobile devices are a source of distraction at work and the cause of errors, productivity loss, time loss, data loss, etc.

Well, let’s see it through…

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Managing growth while successfully controlling your expenses, retaining your critical resources and facing competition; and simultaneously increasing profit margin, of course, to please shareholders!  Well, it’s not an easy business to be a manager these days. And very few can boast being a visionary one!

One of the key factors of success is certainly productivity, or  the ability to  increase productivity!  And this, nowadays more than ever, goes through technology.

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In today’s business reality, not only do we take for granted that the right information will be accessible anytime, anywhere but also that it will help us make more enlightened decisions instantaneously, on-the-go !

The ability to adjust our business offering in real-time, to make some real-time Marketing. It can constitute an undeniable competitive advantage.

Real-Time Marketing – first, a corporate vision

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Everybody talks about BI (Business Intelligence) and its virtues since a few years; everybody wants BI seeing in it a miracle remedy to its enterprise or Sales Force performance or thinking it could be the new growth vector they’re looking for. And probably with good reason but it can’t be done with a blink of an eye, there has to be a sound analysis done before mobilizing Business Intelligence!

Challenges of Business Intelligence

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Many clients from medium and large enterprises that we meet have migrated their CRM in the Cloud or are seriously thinking about it. On the other, and as surprising as it may look, we have also met others who have set a Cloud CRM and are on the verge… of coming down from their cloud!!!  In fact, just recently, while attending the CFO Summit in the USA, we were quite surprised to find out that many enterprises were not that satisfied with a well-known Cloud CRM solution and are seriously looking to a tailor-made CRM solution!

This is the story for this post; why should you migrate to a Cloud CRM and why should you look into a more traditional, some would say a more, personalized solution?

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Companies today have many means to use to increase sales and achieve corporate objectives! Moreover, several of these means (strategies, tools, tactics, etc.) are the heart of the managers and executives annual Strategic Plans.

Marketing for example can play within the entire range of tactics and tools, whether traditional marketing with advertising, media placement, direct marketing, promotions, etc., or Marketing 2.0 with a wide assortment of technologies for collaboration and profiles in Social Media… this, of course, if you’re an aficionado of Web 2.0 and already have an Enterprise 2.0 footprint – a digital footprint.

Human Resources may, for its part, contribute to the achievement of objectives by providing additional or better qualified resources, resource allocation, training, or help with developing and deploying a Knowledge Management strategy, etc.

And then there’s IT….

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