Business Opportunity Assessment™

The Business Opportunity Assessment releases the inherent value locked inside your data. It delivers customer insight and business intelligence. The results provide immediately actionable opportunities to improve your sales and marketing.

In today's turbulent economic climate, it's vital to fully exploit systems data. Your systems are no longer an overhead, they are a valuable asset. Used correctly, the information they contain helps reduce costs and increase revenues.

Sometimes it is difficult to know where to start. What area of business provides the greatest potential? Which piece of data will deliver the customer insight you're seeking?

Unsure where to start? A Business Opportunity Assessment will provide direction.

Have clear objectives? A Business Opportunity Assessment will deliver the results.

Read on to understand how a it works. Skip to the end to see the results.

Assimilate business processes and IT systems

Before getting embroiled in data, we understand how a business operates:

• What does your organisation do?
• What are the benefits to your customers?
• How do you make money?

Together we identify the systems that contain sales and marketing information. We consider departmental databases and spreadsheets, websites, sales systems and CRM.

We identify the possible sources of data:

Tele-sales, On-line sales, Customer service,  Website contacts, e-News letter registrations, Departmental databases, Spreadsheets, Marketing communications and campaigns, Competitive intelligence, Publicly available information, Organisation and contact lists, Market research, External lists and demographics, Product management, Content management systems for off-line and on-line publications, Supply chain and logistics

• How does each system support the business?
• What documentation is available, specification, data design (entity relationship diagrams)?
• How do these systems interact?
• What rules could be applied to link systems data?
• Are there common definitions, consistent customer and product identifiers?

Audit and appraise systems data

We review each source, auditing its content to establish is currency and value. The goal is to understand what each set of data means. Together they provide a complete picture of your business:

• How robust is the data? What business rules were applied at data entry?
• Focusing on customer related data - what is the meaning of the tables and fields?
• Are fields consistently populated and where not, which have missing values?
• Are values standardised and or are there free text entries?

Against each data source, we highlight any issues concerning data quality or integrity. We consider how they may affect use for marketing or analytical purposes.

Auditing specific fields of information:

• Analyse data values, frequency, patterns and format
• Discover important data statistics (Min, Max, Nulls etc.) and levels of population
• Identify redundant or duplicate data
• Review referential integrity (analysing joins between tables)

Equipped with a thorough understanding of your data, we consider how it can be used.

Common issues may include:

• Duplicate organisation and or contact records - combine duplicates ensuring that their associated transaction data is not lost or overlooked
• Unstructured free text entries - what can be done to improve usability? Process the field, creating a new discrete value for analysis
• Date fields varying in format - misleading analysis can result,  ensure US / UK formats are identified and convert all dates to a common standard

Where are the issues? And how can these issues be overcome? We usually resolve issues that can be reasonably “fixed”.

At this stage we build summarisations or derived data fields:

• Calculate / derived values: gross margin, etc
• Applying categorisations: customer and product types, etc
• Building models to uncover customer behaviours and or value

We build customer segmentation to support train-of-thought analysis, these may include:

• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
• Recency, Frequency and Value analysis (RFV or RFM)

Modelling data provides the means to discover a customers true worth and assess them in relation to other customers.

This stage is critical to the data analysis that will follow. Data due diligence is balanced against timely delivery, avoiding lost business opportunities. Striking the correct balance is essential.

Train-of-thought analysis and data exploration

A report will tell you which customers spent the most or products sold in greatest quantity. Following each with a train-of-thought analysis uncovers the detail around those results.

By drilling-down into the detail, the true value of those customers who spent the most will be revealed. Similarly so for the margin made on products which sold in greatest numbers.

The most likely thought starters revolve are:

• How many customers are there?
• Are there any obvious differences in classification?
• Where are they located?
• What is their status?
• When did they last respond to a communication, make an enquiry or a purchase?
• How often do they purchase?
• What type of products do they buy?

Discover latent trends or segments

Having identified what your customers do, we explore what they haven't done!

Focusing on your core products and services, the ones that all your customers 'should' purchase - we uncover what these customers have in common. Are their discernable groups or customers segments?

Results identified by:

• Analysis; slicing and dicing all available data
• Navigating through the data, from where ever it was sourced
• Application of data mining techniques
• Further data modelling e.g. Market Basket Analysis

Market Basket Analysis identifies purchasing habits and cross selling potential. It delivers the "Amazon effect" to your business. We also use the customer segmentation to identify behavioural differences.

Results

At each stage results are recorded in sufficient detail for opportunities to be acted upon:

• What rules should be applied to improve accuracy of customer information and how would the business benefit ?
• Have opportunities for data capture been missed. If the information were collected, how would it improve customer understanding?
• Each analysis details the objective, logic applied, findings and applied business observation

The results help organisations implement a data-driven approach to sales and marketing. The results of a Business Opportunity Assessment typically deliver:

• Identification of highest and lowest performing customers
• Quantifying customers current and long-term value
• Results of customer segmentation
• Understanding of purchasing behaviours
• Identification of cross sell and up sell opportunities
• Understanding and quantifying discount effects
• Support for customer retention and acquisition programmes
• Quantifiable sales propositions and incentive programmes
• Efficiencies in marketing communications
• Additional revenues and increased profits

Workshop

The results are demonstrated in an interactive group analysis workshop. Jointly with the client's management, the hypotheses are refined to meet their specific objectives.

When presented with a report, there is a natural tendency to ask for more detail. We will pre-empt many of these enquiries, but some will undoubtedly be triggered within the workshop. Active involvement is encouraged by all participants.

Deliverables usually include:

• Report on systems data appraisal
• Report on output from segmentation analysis
• Illustrations of segment components and opportunities for use in “quick wins”
• Segment definitions for application to in-house systems
• Sales opportunities, with flagged customer records for action
• Options for improved marketing communications

We are passionate about data, it is a fantastic resource. Just in case there is any doubt, there is probably huge potential lying dormant in your systems data.

Your business can gain commercial and competitive advantage through the application of the data in your corporate systems, it's just waiting for it to be exploited!

Investment

Each project is a ring-fenced, fixed-price assignment with agreed actionable deliverables. You will know what will be achieved and when you can expect the results. Balancing these with a fixed fee, you can judge project success and potential return on investment.

What next?

Would you like to better understand your customers and increase sales? If that's a 'Yes', by all means make contact (details top right of page). We would be delighted to talk to you.

Not ready yet? Perhaps view a client project (any on the right of this page) to find out more about the results and benefits they achieved.