CRM, BI, & Analytics

Simply put, CRM, BI, & Analytics define how you gain insights from an end-user.

CRM (Customer Relationship Management), BI (Business Intelligence), and (Web) Analytics is a strategic pillar to an E-Business team and overall E-Business strategy.

CRM

There are generally 3 facets of CRM: Service, Marketing, and Sales. Depending on the type of organization you work in, CRM efforts may entail all these facets for your E-Business team. Generally speaking, for consumer-oriented E-Business, the “Marketing” facet of CRM is where E-Business professionals will focus.

The concept behind CRM in E-Business is centering all customer-facing communications around segments of customers in your database. While the online world has evolved significantly from a technical perspective, most websites today treat all site visitors exactly the same. Marketing messaging to new purchasers of your products compared to long-time brand advocates should vary. I attribute this to the seasoned “car guy” who walks onto the dealer lot having owned 10 or more cars in their lifetime. How the salesperson “markets” or “sells” to the seasoned “car guy” would be much different than a first-time new-car buyer with little-to-no familiarity with vehicles. The seasoned buyer would be aggravated with a basic sales pitch that insults their intelligence.

The same goes for the marketing of your products within the realm of E-Business — by leveraging the history of your customer database, you know more about your customer to be able to tailor a message that is relevant to them. CRM strategy then becomes the foundation for which your E-Commerce and eMarketing strategies are built upon.

BI

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.

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