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BI & Analytics

BI & Analytics define how to gain insights from an end-user.

BI (Business Intelligence) and (Web) Analytics are strategic pillars to an E-Business team and overall E-Business strategy.

BI (Business Intelligence)

Business Intelligence is often thought of as more of an IT-related function. Within the realm of E-Business, Business Intelligence is closely related to CRM. CRM ties customer information into a central repository for segmentation purposes -- but looks at what already happened. Business Intelligence also focuses on past data but also offers predictive analytics and data mining.

BI tools offer a look ahead into business and help identify trends or segments predictively. You may have market research which identifies your core consumer segments. However, a BI tool may evaluate your data in your CRM system to identify sub-segments based on customer data.

Within E-Business, BI is still very loosely defined and is often associated with "reporting." I personally see BI becoming a more integral part of the E-Business function as E-Business professionals become engaged in more multi-channel efforts with marketing and customer segmentation.

Competitive Intelligence

Analyzing what's happening within your own business is only part of the battle -- your Metrics and KPIs are a direct relation to your competitors in the marketplace. Competitive Intelligence not only provides insights into what competitors are doing, but it also gives you insights into how their strategy may be changing -- and from this, you determine if you need to do any course-correcting of your own.

Web analytics

Depending on the size of the organization, it's very common to have dedicated web analytics personnel as the amount of data being collected for analysis is daunting in the online world. The web analyst facet of CRM, BI, & Analytics must have a deep understanding of cause and effect relationships with a passionate curiosity to understand the "why" behind consumer/customer online actions.

Recommended reading:

• Web Analytics 2.0 (book)
• Occam's Razor (blog)