The Best Companies Do Better with BI

Top service organizations using business intelligence enjoy a 42 percent better improvement in customer retention than do laggard firms using the same systems, according to a recent report. The report postulates that increasing customer demand for faster and more efficient service as well as rising resource costs are driving service organizations to increasingly turn to business intelligence. The report, "Get Smart: Business Intelligence and Analytics for Service Organizations" from Aberdeen Research and based on responses from more than 250 firms, finds that best-in-class firms are five times more likely than laggard firms to conduct simulation modeling on service operations, and 82 percent more likely to have established standards and processes to ensure data cleansing and accuracy. Additionally, the top-performing companies are nearly two-and-a-half times more likely to analyze service data near real time or daily. These best-performing firms employ enterprisewide scorecards or performance management systems, the report says, among other characteristics:

• consolidating data from common sources into a common service database;
• employing executive dashboard tools as well as exception and alert reporting within the service knowledge management solution; and
• using forecasting solutions.

The report points out that frequent analysis of service trend and performance information is a critical element of meeting customer demands for outstanding service as well as producing overall service profitability. By examining key performance indicators more often than other firms, top-performing companies can quickly make any necessary changes -- before profitability is impacted, the report says. "A key requirement of a service organization is the ability to adjust operations to meet quickly changing market pressures and priority mandates," write report authors Mickey Long and Sumair Dutta. This extra attention to detail in BI maintenance and usage is helping the best firms improve their bottom lines, according to the report, which says that top firms generate 70 percent more service profit than laggard companies do. Overall, the best-in-class firms have improved their time-to-decision performance by 47 percent via BI technology. Firms that want to move into the best-in-class arena need to follow similar practices and enable on-demand distribution of key service information across the enterprise, according to the report. Aberdeen found that nearly 80 percent of service executives surveyed have in place -- or plan within the next twelve months to implement -- a BI/analytics solution within their service operation. These executives, the report says, are using better data analysis to balance customer, competitive, and cost pressures. To obtain a complimentary copy of the report, click here. (Free registration required.)

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