How can business intelligence assist your marketing team?

Despite sharing a common goal of increased sales, many companies find their sales and marketing departments to be out of sync.

However, to be the most successful these two departments must be in lockstep with one another. In this blog, we will examine three ways Business Intelligence (BI) can enhance the performance of your marketing department, and foster a cohesive relationship with the sales department.

A single source of truth

Ideally, your sales and marketing teams would have a collaborative relationship. There would be open and ongoing communication about lead generation and follow up. Business intelligence (BI) can serve as a bridge to bring the two departments together. With BI, both departments have access to a single source of the truth. Your teams will be able to quickly see facts such as which customers are increasing or decreasing in sales, or increasing in sales but decreasing in profit. Your teams can use these insights to develop strategies for effective lead generation campaigns and sales follow up. Eliminating individual perspectives and gut feelings creates a clear singularity of purpose. This reinforces a cooperative sales and marketing partnership, and a healthier company overall.

Track campaign performance

When you are ready to start thinking about the outcome of a campaign, your team can use business intelligence to assess its effectiveness. For instance, BI can show your team how many new customer or prospects your business has following the campaign, and where they are in the sales funnel. By comparing the number of new or potential customers in the period following the campaign to a time when there was no campaign in place, for example the same time last year, you have a good estimate of the effect of your campaign. These analyses are easy to perform in Phocas, where you can set up dashboards to keep track of performance, and with a few simple clicks drill down into the underlying data. Without BI, your team might rely on the IT team to report from ERP and CRM systems, and may even have to manipulate data in spreadsheets. This is not only time consuming, but prone to human error. Without BI, your team is not agile, and cannot respond fast to emerging trends.

Armed with the facts, your marketing department can use data to guide the development of future campaigns. In addition, your BI solution can help the sales team discover new trends and opportunities by analyzing your customer buying behavior. By knowing your customers, their needs, and ideal price points, you have the ability to develop refined promotional offers. Lastly, by identifying the most successful types of campaigns, your team can free up budget to conduct larger, more effective campaigns that contribute to business growth.

Re-engage deals stuck in the funnel

Many marketing departments spend a lot of time and effort on lead generation, and are often concerned about the sales team’s follow up. BI can minimize this miscommunication as your team can follow leads as they move through the sales funnel. Once marketing has identified stagnant leads, a targeted campaign can be developed to re-engage the relevant prospects.

For more information, click here to see how Phocas can assist you to become more efficient and successful in your marketing efforts.