Consumer and market intelligence is a life saver for businesses of all sizes. But with so many different data sources available within different departments of a company, that it can feel like a game of telephone where you cross your fingers and hope that the intel is being relayed correctly. And these silos inevitably endanger companies in many ways.
We are going to tackle how continuous intelligence destroys silos and helps your company create better communication, faster results, seamless campaign management and more. But first, here are some statistics that give weight to the importance of using a continuous intelligence analytics tool to destroy silos
- 47% of marketers stated that their information is siloed and difficult to access.
- 48% of organizations cite ineffective communication between team members as their top hurdle
- A 200-agent contact center loses $1.5M in labor costs annually because of siloed communications
Additionally, 84% of business employees think that companies are losing opportunities by not moving to more modern solutions, such as continuous intelligence. It’s time to change up your business routine – and its tools. But first, let’s take a closer look at the many data sources available.
Competitive Intelligence Lives Everywhere in an Organization
Intelligence touches every part of your organization – from the marketing department to customer service, production and investor opportunities. It even reaches into your employees’ homes with the evolution of remote work. With so much intel spread out, it’s critical that your team can stay on the same page with the many data sources available.
Let’s talk about the big kahuna that encompasses many data sources in one – customer relationship management (CRM). This tool can be broken down into three simple categories – analytical, operational and collaborative. But all of these components are focused on identifying, tracking, managing and interacting with current customers and new prospects.
Collaborative
There are two main parts of collaborative CRM – interaction management and channel management.
- Interaction management tracks all customer interactions. And this includes email, face-to-face, social media, etc. And it tracks outgoing communications as well, including any notes that were taken on the customer. Sometimes this intel lives in chat logs and call logs that exist in their own department and aren’t part of the CRM universe. This is a problem.
- Channel management tracks insight gleaned through various channel-based interactions. With it, companies can determine which platforms are most beneficial for communicating with various consumer segments. But if your communications aren’t being captured on the interaction side, then your channel management is likely lacking context and offering unreliable intel.
Operational
Enter the robots. This type of CRM takes the place of humans – or at the very least, complements them. Humans make errors, and sometimes these relatively small errors can have huge ramifications. Operational CRM keeps tabs on customer interactions, forecasting sales, and assessing marketing campaigns. And it’s all done automatically with no human interaction, except for that which is needed to read the results.
Analytical
Humans have patterns, and every individual consumer has a pattern as well. Analytical CRM identifies these patterns to uncover game changing consumer behavior and trends. Brands can use this intel to craft campaigns, create new product or service offerings, inform innovation efforts and so much more.
Additionally, it helps companies with pipeline analysis, sales forecasting, budgeting and reporting. Basically, it tracks your bottom line, and helps you create benchmarks for your brand.
These three pillars of CRM are critical to every company. Unfortunately, that intel is usually only seen by the branches gathering it, with periodic reviews for specific purposes, like checking in on the volume or recurring themes in customer complaints, and maybe addressing specific desires with new product development.
But more often than not, the information is just stored with little attention paid to it. This is a self-created blind spot and it’s something that many companies are realizing needs to change, especially those folding in other insight – like investor intel.
Investor intelligence matches your company with investors and reveals start-ups to potentially collaborate with or at least have in your line of sight.
For example, below we have a heatmap of the ‘Farm to Fork’ category. This data breaks down the companies into distinct subsections, detailing the number of companies in each, when they were founded, how many investments were received and both the total and median amounts, rounding it out with the CAGR.
Taking this intel and layering it with other sources in your business intelligence platform is the stuff of sound business decision-making! And this can be accomplished via our Intelligence Connector, which is the evolution of capturing continuous intelligence to destroy silos.
Centralizing Insight with Intelligence Connector
NetBase Quid’s Intelligence Connector shares intelligence across your company, offering the ability to make quick, data-driven decisions based on aggregated structured and unstructured intel. It offers one source of truth. Let’s see what this actually means!
In short, using continuous intelligence to destroy silos just makes sense. It simplifies sharing metrics across your organization with an end-to-end solution for data connectivity, storage, and distribution. Combining market, media and consumer analytics data, while automating the process of data sharing and analysis without the need of any technical expertise is precisely what most businesses need right now.
The Intelligence Connector wins accolades from customers not only because it’s completely automated, but because it offers metrics and data to more sources than brands are accustomed to having. The internal/external combo it facilitates offers a unique window into consumer buyer behavior and also market shifts that can revolutionize an offering.
The first hurdle is settling on the software, and the second is shifting the company’s culture as it related to data analysis. Democratizing access to insight is a must.
Democratizing Access to Insight
When consumer and market intel isn’t shared across various departments there are efficiency problems – and morale problems as well, not to mention duplicating efforts and turf wars, which happen far too often in our technologically advanced society
This can result in a slower than acceptable response time when a crisis strikes, or a failure to pivot fast enough when a campaign flops. Likewise, it could cause you to be slow to act when an opportunity arises and to miss out on emerging trends.
When everyone is on the same page, multiple minds viewing the same metrics, real change can happen. With everyone on board, even the non-techies, problems will be easily recognized, and opportunities realized quicker.
As an example, below we see summary metrics highlighting positive and negative sentiment expressed by consumers about a top beverage company, across multiple channels. If everyone has access, then everyone will know immediately that on May 12 there was a dip in sentiment due to the rise of product prices. This could impact everything from messaging to product development.
Showing a sensitivity to overwhelming concerns, or at least tracking them to see if they dissipate, is precisely what next-level intelligence is for.
The culture of analytics is evolving and everyone requires access to data and insights – a single point of truth – upon which to base campaigns, innovations, strategy, and the most mission critical decisions. Your team needs to be a part of this evolution. If you’re not, it’s not a matter of if, but when you’re left behind. Because it’s not about data silos anymore – it’s about data oceans. Continuous intelligence destroys silos for savvy companies seeking to stay on top of their business intelligence game – reach out for a demo!
