Forearmed is forewarned as the adage goes, and business intelligence (BI) fulfills that purpose in varying degrees. Depending on whether a brand’s data assets go through the descriptive, predictive, or prescriptive type of analytics. At the core here is analytics which is about discovering, interpreting, and communicating meaningful patterns gleaned from the data assets.
So what is BI all about; its the combination of strategies and technologies deployed by a brand on its data assets, enhancing its competitive advantage and serving its core mission. Therefore, investing in BI capacities and capabilities is not an option for brands wanting to survive, let alone grow.
Leading you to question; if it is an investment, then what are the returns? And more importantly, what value does this investment bring in for the brand? The value impact is contingent on the type of analytics the brand is capable of deploying- descriptive (what happened), predictive (what will happen), and prescriptive (what needs to be done to make it happen). The optimal value is in the harnessing of prescriptive insights.
“We should not only use the brains we have but all that we can borrow.” — Woodrow Wilson
And what sort of data lend themselves to such prescriptive insights that a brand can leverage to meet its core mission of delivering on the product or service? The answer is customer sentiment data. You are not what you claim to be but what others perceive you to be.
Investing in mining sentiment data goes beyond the usual what happened and why. Real-time insights provide a wealth of opportunities for customer recovery, retention, and amplification of brand virtues. And this isn’t restricted to customers alone. Having a pulse on the sentiments of employees, who are the internal customers is equally important. After all, a happy employee makes for a happy customer!
Figure 1 – Sentiment Analysis
Sentiment analysis (Figure 1) belongs to the prescriptive analytics side of the analytics spectrum, which helps brands get things right by enabling them to take the right action at the right time. These prescriptive insights are value drivers for ensuring long- term viability of a business. The returns on investing in such intelligence solutions far outweigh the costs. The underlying metric should be that the focus of attention is the return on intelligence thus, serving as a precursor to validate the more conventional return on investment.
