E-Intelligence Tools

Recently there's been a lot of negative press surrounding the collection of customer information. Companies like DoubleClick have earned reams of bad publicity and a troublesome lawsuit. But electronic information collection is just a new twist on a strategy that businesses have always used. The fact is that businesses can serve customers better when they know them better. And the net gives businesses powerful tools to do just that. The SAS Institute has staked its future on turning collected data into decision making information. John McIntyre, VP of ebusiness at SAS, explains why companies should move forward into the Information Age

Information Equals Competitive Advantage

Knowing your customers better can result in better decision making for your company. "There are tremendous new volumes of data to be analyzed," McIntyre says. "I think people used to believe that only a small, elite group would ever take the time to analyze the performance of their interactions with suppliers, customers and companies. But many more companies now realize that this will provide them with a competitive advantage and put them in a position to grow." Businesses who know exactly what their customers want will be the ones to succeed. "The well of information about an organization's customers is one of its most important assets. Companies have become much more acquainted with the notion that retaining good, profitable customers is a better fiscal policy than continual mass marketing to acquire new customers," McIntyre says. Continually reaching out to new customers is important, but serving those already with you is even more important

Putting the Pieces Together

One part of SAS's job is to make customer information easy to collect. But perhaps even more important is organizing that information in a way that's easy to understand. All the channels of a business must communicate in order to get a full picture of customers. Information obtained during the order process must be lined up with information learned in tech support, and so on. That type of fully realized information helps guide the future of your company. "Large, multinational companies use many different ways to collect information about orders, invoices, shipping and customer service," McIntyre says. "We've spent our twenty-four years in business making sure that any data can be put into a position where somebody can use it for decision making and bring some real analytical fire to the task so their decisions are well informed." No longer does a company have to blindly make decisions and hope for the best. With the kinds of holistic info-gathering now possible, online business leaders can make informed decisions that are much more likely to be the right ones.

Prioritize Your Customers

The old model of business pushed the acquisition of new customers. Certainly that's vital to any growing business. But just as important is serving the customers you already have. McIntyre says it's important to assign priorities to customers. "Rather than looking at programs and product profitability, I start looking at customer profitability," McIntyre says. "Instead of just doing market share kinds of comparisons with competitors, I’m now profiling individual customers and getting some information that will help me delight them as they have interactions with my company." Once you've collected information on your customers, you can start serving them more efficiently. "The beauty of having lots of information available about customers and about your own costs of dealing with them through different media is that you can begin to reorient your company," McIntyre says. "There may be some customers that I would do very well dealing with through channel A, but it’d be way too expensive for me to deal with them through channel B." It's not that Customer A is more important than B – just more profitable. Spending more resources courting the most profitable customers is only sensible. It's a big, competitive world out there for businesses. But charting your course is made just a bit easier when you have all the background information you can get. Start thinking about how your business can use the information it gets. Because believe us – your competition is already doing just that.