Analytic Business Intelligence - Customer Stories

The range of organizations utilizing analytic business intelligence applications today varies widely. Businesses small and large have found analytic business intelligence to be beneficial to their bottom lines, regardless of size or industry. While most people think of technology, finance, or services when they think of business analysis software solutions, Business Intelligence can be used to collect, organize, and analyze any type of data, not just financial, as the following customer stories exemplify. It is important to note that while analytic business intelligence applications can be stand-alone, they are most often used in conjunction with one another. Most Business Intelligence providers have a suite of products that are each tailored for specific functions and are used together to achieve desired results.

Below are a few customer stories about their experiences using Business Intelligence in different industries worldwide.

Hewlett Packard

HP is one of the largest companies in the world, with 150,000 employees in 178 countries and millions of customers worldwide. HP’s global growth was causing the company to experience significant standardization and consistency issues in all areas of management, from customer service to sales, marketing and financial. Each office had its own resources, software, information systems, budgets, currencies, and languages. After the 2002 merger with Compaq, HP did a major marketing and spending audit and found that due to the disparity and non-standardized information, they were almost unable to determine their marketing Return on Investment (ROI) or strategically align their marketing and spending practices. HP turned to Siebel for Business Intelligence solutions that allow HP to now see it's entire global marketing process, starting with planning and budgeting, through customer acquisition and customer service and following through with reporting and analysis. HP and Siebel worked to deploy Siebel Marketing, Siebel MRM, and Siebel Business Analytics to more than 2,500 users around the world.

The Siebel Business Intelligence applications streamlined and unified global marketing and have allowed HP to globally mine customer data, plan, execute, measure and track marketing processes and increase the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing activities. In addition to saving millions of dollars in marketing spending and staffing, the system also enhances the customer buying experience by streamlining information and allowing salespeople to be prepared with the best information for that client. HP now has a unified, global Business Intelligence system that fits their business, and allows the company to function as one solid organization, which benefits both HP’s bottom line as well as their customers?

http://www.siebel.com/common/includes/pdf_frame.shtm?pdfUrl=/downloads/case_studies/hp.pdf

Harrah's Entertainment

Harrah’s Entertainment, Inc., is one of the most recognized names in the casino and entertainment industry. With over 20 casinos in different locations, Harrah’s needed Business Intelligence solution to enable them to fully utilize the amount of data in their already existing database, which held information on more than 19 million customers. Harrah’s chose to work with Cognos (http://www.cognos.com) to develop and implement Business Intelligence applications to meet their unique needs as a casino.

The primary goal of Harrah’s Business Intelligence solution is to attract and retain customers, as this is the most competitive aspect of the gaming industry. Cognos' Business Intelligence Solution for CRM allows Harrah’s to analyze their marketing campaigns, target certain clientele and demographics, and cater to individual clients based on gaming histories.

To track customer activity, Cognos worked with Harrah’s to develop a “Total Rewards®” card program, which customers insert into gambling machines. Customer’s can get rewards based on their play, and Harrah’s can track each players' gaming patterns and preferences across all of their locations. This allows Harrah’s to determine which customers are going to which locations, which games are most attractive, and which marketing campaigns are working in what markets, giving them a clear competitive edge over other casinos that are not able to see such a big picture of customer patterns.

http://www.cognos.com/news/releases/2001/rel_373.html

The Ohio Department of Education

The education sector might not be one that usually comes to mind when you think of Business Intelligence, but the State of Ohio recognized the benefits of utilizing a unified Business Intelligence solution to manage student and school performance data, and has seen major increases in academic performance.

The Ohio Department of Education employed a customized MicroStragegy Business Intelligence Platform?(http://www.microstrategy.com) called Interactive Local Report Card (iLRC) to accumulate, standardize, organize and put online performance and financial data for teachers, parents, and legislators and the general public to see and use. Any Ohio parent with school aged children can log on and see how much individual schools spend per pupil per year, attendance rates, enrollment figures, graduation rates, test results, and student/teacher ratios. One benefit the State hopes to see is the easy access to the information make parents more aware of what is going on with the public education system and therefore encourage them to get more involved.

The Department also believes that the transparency of the information will enable them to track successes and failures of education initiatives and diagnose and prevent problems in specific, targeted ways. This will also hopefully increase funding by making grant proposals, scholarships, bond applications, and tax-initiatives more successful because of the increased accuracy of data.

While most States require and issue only one comprehensive annual report, which is static and often highly contested, the MicroStrategy iLRC application allows the State of Ohio access to a continually updated diagnostic tool that can be manipulated and used year round. Just knowing what problems exist where had an immediate impact on the decision-making processes for funding, resources, and staffing state-wide. Teachers and administrators can use the system to quickly diagnose and proactively manage potential problems in specific target areas without having to wait for the more traditional, complicated annual reports. And, if certain schools or teaching strategies are showing increased performance, that information can be analyzed and used as a model for success in other areas. Data-driven decisions are imperative to the success of an educational system, and the Ohio Department of Education has seen definitive benefits from utilizing MicroStrategy’s Business Intelligence application.

http://www.microstrategy.com/Customers/Successes/ohio_edudept.asp

Kohl's

Data-driven intelligence enables financial planners and buyers to make better decisions. In the consumer goods industry, companies need comprehensive, accurate information about their sales cycles and inventory patterns in order to have the most products in their stores, avoid over- or under- stocking and staffing, and to cut costs where possible. Having an accurate picture of customers?buying patterns also allows customer service representatives to give customers immediate answers to their questions. Business Intelligence applications also allow buyers to better negotiate with vendors on quantities and schedules, and can save organizations like large department stores time and money by making buying decisions clear-cut.

Kohl’s is a nationwide chain of department stores that is continuing to grow. The corporation plans to open almost 100 new stores around the country in 2005, and part of this expansion plan is an overhaul of their customer service and sales administration systems. Kohl’s executives wanted a more comprehensive, unified system that would allow them to see supply, demand, and customer behavior across all of their stores in order to maximize marketing strategies and increase customer satisfaction.

Kohl’s selected SAS (http://www.SAS.com) to help them create a Business Intelligence application that would enable them to accurately predict, analyze, and optimize their merchandising and customer service processes. Kohl's implemented SAS’s Revenue Optimization Suite, a Business Intelligence financial application that is linked to their customer service and inventory data, creating financial reports and forecasts, allowing Kohl’s to efficiently manage revenue and margins. The SAS Business Intelligence application allows Kohl’s executives and sales managers to easily access data, and the application also automatically performs many of the analytical functions for them, issuing detailed reports, flagging specific performance measures, and notifying employees when specific events occur. This gives Kohl's managers and executives insight into their company’s cycles, and allows them to respond quickly and efficiently to current needs as well as predict future patterns and better prepare for them.

http://www.sas.com/news/feature/16jan05/kohls.html

BT Retail

BT Retail in the UK is a division of BT, one of Europe’s leading providers of telecommunications services. BT Retail generates tens of billions in annual revenues and has almost 50,000 employees. As one of the fastest growing divisions of the company, BT Retail turned to Siebel to help them implement Siebel Business Analytics, a Business Intelligence application to help them to become a more retail customer focused organization.

BT as a whole had become fractioned, and marketing teams from various divisions were creating uncoordinated campaigns, and often targeting the same customers. Clients were receiving multiple and repeated communications from different departments and campaigns, and customer service records were fragmented and disparate. The problem came to a head when one client reported that they had received over 20 separate communications from different sales and marketing employees at BT. The company then fully realized that it was losing significant time, money, and customers because of their lack of information organization and utilization.

Siebel's system brought together more than 20, 000 users and created a single, unified view of BT Retail’s 20 million customers. BT now has one unified database for customer service and reporting systems, and sales and marketing efforts are no longer duplicated. The unified customer data allows customer service, sales and marketing representatives to respond faster and more accurately to customer problems and inquiries. Before, customer profiles, preferences and account information were not linked between BT divisions, and work was being duplicated multiple times and frustrating customers.

A large percentage of the data analysis functions are now automated the Siebel Business Analytics application replaced 95% of the company’s fragmented manual reporting procedures, and BT Retail recovered the thousands of lost hours that employees had spent compiling disparate reports in various formats. This enables Business Intelligence Retail executives to forecast company-wide, when previously they were getting individual reports from different divisions. Siebel’s Target Account Selling methodology also allows BT Retail marketers to execute closely targeted marketing campaigns, saving the company millions of dollars in marketing, significantly benefiting their bottom line.

http://www.siebel.com/common/includes/pdf_frame.shtm?pdfUrl=/downloads/case_studies/btretail.pdf

McDonald's Canada

McDonald’s Canada needed to unify it’s reporting processes in order to enable accurate and timely decision-making in customer service, sales and marketing, and supply chain departments. As both a customer service and consumer goods organization with millions of customers, the amount of customer data McDonald’s was trying to aggregate and analyze was overwhelming sales and marketing managers. McDonald’s Canada opted to work with Cognos (http://www.cognos.com) to deploy their ReportNet?Business Intelligence application to help manage its enterprise-wide reporting needs.

ReportNet is a single, unified Business Intelligence application that will be deployed to all of McDonald’s Canada’s restaurant owners and executives, providing financial, customer, and human resource information about each market in a consistent, standardized format. The application is a true self-service tool, allowing each individual to access the information he or she needs in order to make timely, effective decisions about their own individual franchises. Using the same information, regional and executive officers can create automated business reports, and use the up-to-the-minute information to make management decisions in a matter of minutes. This will enable McDonald’s Canada operate more efficiently, save time and money, and pass on those savings to their millions of customers.

http://www.cognos.com/news/releases/2005/0125.html

Volkswagen AG

Volkswagen is the largest automobile manufacturer in Europe and the fourth largest in the world, with sales increasing year by year. Business Intelligence is especially important in the automobile industry, as each product is worth tens of thousands of dollars, and each sale is critical to dealership owners. As well, research and development cycles are lengthy, and accurate data on supply, demand, profit and loss is imperative to the planning process. In order to maximize marketing and purchasing power and utilize customer data, VW chose Business Objects?(http://www.businessobjects.com) WebIntelligence application to help manage data and allow thousands of employees to access, analyze, and share information across every division -- from finance, production, and development to research, sales and marketing, and purchasing.

In addition to being a hands-on user tool, WebIntelligence automates reports on pilot projects, vehicle launches, factory negotiations, supply management, and market data that can be instantly distributed to VW’s thousands of employees around the world.

As a very customer-focused company, VW wanted to increase customer service and satisfaction. By allowing employees to access extensive customer service records and supply data, Business Objects Business Intelligence application allows them to fully respond to each customer inquiry and provide fast, accurate service, whether it’s in the garage or on the sales floor.

Overall, Business Objects?WebIntelligence gives VW access to a consistent and accurate 360-degree view of its entire business, from the factory to the customer.

http://www.businessobjects.com/news/press/press2002/vw_rollout_strategy.asp

Barclays UK Consumer Finance

Barclaycard, the credit card division of Barclays Bank, has been a dominant credit card company in the UK since the 1970s ?in fact, it was the only issuer of VISA cards in the UK for many years. However, in the late 90s the market became increasingly competitive, partially due to the entrance of web-based credit providers, the subsequent reduction in the length of time and amount of paperwork for credit application processes, and the web-enabled ability for customers to do instant, side-by-side comparisons of credit card offers. Barclaycard began seeing their market share shrink significantly. As the Barclaycard had been the dominant provider for so many years, the company was not fully equipped to deal with the sudden emergence of competition, much of it international, particularly from the United States.

While Barclaycard was losing ground in some areas of the market, they still had several advantages: their brand name was already recognized and trusted country-wide, and because of their position as the prominent provider for so many years, they had existing data on more customers than anyone else. Not only that, Barclays UK Consumer Finance had developed a prospect file containing data on all UK adult households using anonymous credit bureau information. This gave Barclaycard information on almost 30 percent of the population of the United Kingdom.

In order to utilize this data to help recover their market share, Barclaycard turned to SAS (http://www.sas.com) for its Customer Intelligence application ?information-based customer management (IBCM).

Using SAS ICBM to mine and standardize their extensive wealth of data, Barclaycard was able to more accurately and efficiently use their unparalleled prospect database as a tool, allowing them to regain their competitive foothold in the market. Barclaycard stated that the SAS Business Intelligence application delivered a return on investment (ROI) within just six months, and that they had their best year ever for recruiting new customers ?1.7 million in 2003.

SAS Customer Intelligence solutions continue to enable Barclaycard to leverage value out of their mines of data, which are growing every day. The Business Intelligence application allows them to not only recruit and retain new customers, but maximize the value of each one. Now, for every single customer on file, Barclaycard has identified the next best opportunity for growing the relationship, making the most out of each customer interaction. The SAS solution also enables Barclaycard to see immediate effects of their business management decisions such as changes in marketing campaigns, adjusting APRs, and offering balance transfer options, and allowing them to manage their marketing campaigns according to hard customer response data, saving both the bank and their customers money.

http://www.sas.com/success/barclaysuk.html