I guess you have already read/heard a lot about CRM and BI, so in this article you will not find description what BI and CRM is. Also you will not find such dispute as “CRM vs BI” or “Why BI is not CRM” etc. What, then, is to discuss? 🙂
Let’s imagine BI and CRM in its tandem.
The discipline of business intelligence includes a broad range of functional activities from data mining and statistical analysis to predictive modeling and reporting. So, BI-applications are often positioned as an indispensable tool for decision making at the tactical and strategic levels. As a rule in this case to work with information efficiently we will need enterprise data warehouse, building of which could “seed” at least half of the total budget for BI, in addition analytical models are rather expensive. Under these circumstances, the need of significant investment is one of the most essential and restrictive factors of dissemination of Business Intelligence systems. At the same time, experience shows that the usage of BI-applications can be fully justified at the operational level, where decisions must be taken exactly in real time. In this approach, building corporate Data Warehouse is not critical, and the using of pre-configured models is not necessary, because BI allows to implement arbitrary “point” data depending on the situation. If you don’t mind I would like to illustrate it with a concrete example.
Let’s consider a small example. For CRM-system we will take Oracle Siebel CRM, as for BI-application it will be Oracle BI. To implement CRM for realizing sms-mailing was proposed to use a single sms-gateway. Let’s assume that the frequency of such mailing is quite high, and volume is measured in ten of thousand of sms. Taking into account that the sms-gateway is just a tool of message transfering, you need to monitor constantly the process of mailing considering the timeline plan, “black lists”, the spam load per user, etc. In this case, in spite of the high performance of Oracle Siebel CRM,it is unreasonable to exchange data between the CRM-system and sms-gateway in online, but it`s reasonable to use additional transit system, which would redistribute the load. When you run a marketing campaign such a system would import data from Oracle Siebel CRM and after the campaign would pass results to the CRM-system . But, at the same time, in case any error arise or a failure campaign reaction time for the problem is reduced, you will know this only after the campaign ends and it may adversely affect the relationship with the client. You could solve this problem either using an expensive integration or through the using of BI-application. For example, Oracle BI enables to control the process of distribution and evaluate the results based on the data from the three systems online. Thus, in case of a large number of notifications incoming to the sms-gateway, that a message is not delivered to the recipient, it would be possible to stop the campaign quickly and make changes promptly, rather than waiting for its completion. Furthermore, using BI in this situation allows to correct the results during the campaign.
So the best effect in the marketing process could be obtained from using BI-applications at the operating level. Also effective BI-applications could be demonstrated in other CRM-processes. In sales BI-applications are indispensable in launching new products to market. In the service – when analyzing satisfaction, assessing value of each customer, etc.
In addition, I would like to notice that such tools as Oracle BI enable to cover the problem of business intelligence at the tactical and strategic levels of management effectively. In this case, using of a single tool would provide high-quality synchronization of business goals, set before BI. The previous experience guarantees more effective using of the already proven BI-application.
Thank you so much for your attention and hope this article is of interest to you.
Elvira Golyak
Business Development Manager
