An introduction to Business Intelligence - The Intelligent Organization
Just as military intelligence works to give armies and generals an upper hand on the battlefield, business intelligence (BI) seeks to give CEOs and CIOs a tactical advantage in the business arena. Business intelligence is fundamentally concerned with transforming your organization's operational data into an accessible store of high-value information (called a data warehouse) and distributing the right information in the right way to the right people at the right time.In both business and military operations, it's easy to see the correlation between the quality of intelligence and the success of operations: Those who comprehend and act quickly upon relevant facts have advantages over those who do not.For this reason, intelligence has value to the business organization. Naturally, tools and technologies to collect and distribute of information—or to improve its quality—-will be embraced and employed quickly.In this article, we'll take a look at some questions that BI can help answer, and we'll offer a few examples of how business intel

Secret Revealed In The Business Code
• Beginners often rush into business without any planning.• Unless you do your homework, there could be many avoidable pitfalls.• You will minimise these pitfalls with careful preparation and planning.• Some people have very little in the way of formal education, and yet they still succeed in business.• Opportunity can be found around every corner if you look for it.• Mention any success story and you will find many more failures.• Everything in business has a buyer’s price and a seller’s price.• Think very carefully before investing money into someone else’s venture.• Help is always available, sometimes from the most unlikely sources.• In the beginning you should always tread carefully.• Never rush into things without being aware of potential problems.• Go for growth when the time is right.• Catch the pennies and the pounds will float naturally towards you.• Heed any lessons learned along the way.• Endeavour to always do your very best for your customers.In my view, nearly all government statistics about reasons for business failures are nonsense.

Undercapitalization, inexperience, or poor management are usually blamed for all business disasters.

Of course, there can be one or several more causes that result in a business going "belly up."

However, from what I've seen, marketing mistakes are by far the primary reason businesses do not survive. This includes companies which consider themselves direct marketers as well as those who do not.

Here are the seven most common marketing mistakes:

1. Management treats marketing as a business expense or simply a department rather than a necessary business investment.

Solution: Marketing should be treated as the driving force of any company. It is the only function that brings in cash. The other major functions in a company are necessary. But they all spend cash. This includes the primary business departments of finance, production and research.

To market any product or service successfully, the company must do two things:

A. Provide marketing with sufficient resources

B. Put marketing at the heart of its business strategy

The whole company should be focused on the needs and wants of customers and be prepared to satisfy their demands.

Marketing must be part of the philosophy of all entrepreneurs and managers.

2. Management does not know specifically what it costs to recruit a new customer. Plus, there are no accurate statistics on the average customer lifetime value.

Without this knowledge, it is impossible to make sound decisions. You cannot determine how much to invest in marketing. If you spend more to gain a customer than their lifetime value, ultimately you will go broke. In the absence of this information, many businesses can and often do fail. To make matters worse, few of the casualties understand why they failed.

Solution: Before you invest large sums on marketing, determine the average lifetime value of a customer. An excellent book that I highly recommend on this topic is The Loyalty Factor by Frederick Reicheld.

3. Management makes no attempt to build a customer database. This is especially so with most retailers, restauranteurs and department store owners. However, I've seen this in many other businesses.

Solution: A company's database of customers is potentially its biggest asset. It's much more valuable than equipment, inv

those who do not.

Here are the seven most common marketing mistakes:

1. Management treats marketing as a business expense or simply a department rather than a necessary business investment.

Solution: Marketing should be treated as the driving force of any company. It is the only function that brings in cash. The other major functions in a company are necessary. But they all spend cash. This includes the primary business departments of finance, production and research.

To market any product or service successfully, the company must do two things:

A. Provide marketing with sufficient resources

B. Put marketing at the heart of its business strategy

The whole company should be focused on the needs and wants of customers and be prepared to satisfy their demands.

Marketing must be part of the philosophy of all entrepreneurs and managers.

2. Management does not know specifically what it costs to recruit a new customer. Plus, there are no accurate statistics on the average customer lifetime value.

Without this knowledge, it is impossible to make sound decisions. You cannot determine how much to invest in marketing. If you spend more to gain a customer than their lifetime value, ultimately you will go broke. In the absence of this information, many businesses can and often do fail. To make matters worse, few of the casualties understand why they failed.

Solution: Before you invest large sums on marketing, determine the average lifetime value of a customer. An excellent book that I highly recommend on this topic is The Loyalty Factor by Frederick Reicheld.

3. Management makes no attempt to build a customer database. This is especially so with most retailers, restauranteurs and department store owners. However, I've seen this in many other businesses.

Solution: A company's database of customers is potentially its biggest asset. It's much more valuable than equipment, in

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To market any product or service successfully, the company must do two things:

A. Provide marketing with sufficient resources

B. Put marketing at the heart of its business strategy

The whole company should be focused on the needs and wants of customers and be prepared to satisfy their demands.

Marketing must be part of the philosophy of all entrepreneurs and managers.

2. Management does not know specifically what it costs to recruit a new customer. Plus, there are no accurate statistics on the average customer lifetime value.

Without this knowledge, it is impossible to make sound decisions. You cannot determine how much to invest in marketing. If you spend more to gain a customer than their lifetime value, ultimately you will go broke. In the absence of this information, many businesses can and often do fail. To make matters worse, few of the casualties understand why they failed.

Solution: Before you invest large sums on marketing, determine the average lifetime value of a customer. An excellent book that I highly recommend on this topic is The Loyalty Factor by Frederick Reicheld.

3. Management makes no attempt to build a customer database. This is especially so with most retailers, restauranteurs and department store owners. However, I've seen this in many other businesses.

Solution: A company's database of customers is potentially its biggest asset. It's much more valuable than equipment, in

, there are no accurate statistics on the average customer lifetime value.

Without this knowledge, it is impossible to make sound decisions. You cannot determine how much to invest in marketing. If you spend more to gain a customer than their lifetime value, ultimately you will go broke. In the absence of this information, many businesses can and often do fail. To make matters worse, few of the casualties understand why they failed.

Solution: Before you invest large sums on marketing, determine the average lifetime value of a customer. An excellent book that I highly recommend on this topic is The Loyalty Factor by Frederick Reicheld.

3. Management makes no attempt to build a customer database. This is especially so with most retailers, restauranteurs and department store owners. However, I've seen this in many other businesses.

Solution: A company's database of customers is potentially its biggest asset. It's much more valuable than equipment, in

rketing, determine the average lifetime value of a customer. An excellent book that I highly recommend on this topic is The Loyalty Factor by Frederick Reicheld.

3. Management makes no attempt to build a customer database. This is especially so with most retailers, restauranteurs and department store owners. However, I've seen this in many other businesses.

Solution: A company's database of customers is potentially its biggest asset. It's much more valuable than equipment, inventory, etc. This is not only true of companies that utilize mail order or Internet marketing. Every single company that wants to survive and prosper needs to build a database.

4. The company does not communicate often enough with its customers. The result is lower sales and profits than are otherwise possible.

Solution: Contact your customers a minimum of once a month. When I started my first business at age 21, I too made many mistakes. The business somehow survived and became a chain of retail confectionery stores called Peterson's House of Fudge. At first I sent my customers an offer every six months. So I tried sending a sales letter every three months. My business doubled. I then began mailing every other month. My business again increased proportionately.

I wound up with the ideal and most profitable interval-- once a month.

At first I thought contacting customers every 30 days might be too often and that customers would get turned off.

But that didn't happen. I got great feedback as well as higher sales. Providing your customers like, or even love, your product or service, as they should, they want to hear from you frequently.

This, of course, is in the context of your sending excellent offers, excellent copy and excellent information.

Indeed, if you are not in frequent contact, your customers will quickly begin to forget about you. Many will start buying from your competitors.

I urge you to contact your customers at least every 30 days (occasionally with special offers a week apart is perfectly fine too).

Your form of contact can be an e-mail, postcard, catalog, telephone call or personal visit. I've found the most effective method of regular contact is with a well-written sales letter.

Rarely do I find a company of any kind which systematically mines the real gold in any business--the customer database. Make sure you do not make this mistake.

Making offers to yo