Posted by Noel Shannon on Fri, Aug 20, 2010 @ 03:36 AM
Most business intelligence tools are good at answering the first question someone might ask, such as “What are my best selling products?” or “Who are my top customers?” or “What are the sales trends for my products or customers?” Some BI tools go a little further to provide clever ways of visualizing answers to questions like these.
Answering the initial question is not all that difficult, as evidenced by the number of tools that can do it. The tough part is answering the subsequent question based on the answer to the first question, and then the third and fourth questions, and so on. I'm not talking just about drilling down, which while useful does not go far enough. The greater difficulty is making it possible for business people to answer any question they come up with in highly intuitive and interactive way.
I talked about this with QlikTech’s market intelligence manager, Tim Brain. He walked through a scenario showing how QlikView is designed to do just this: answer the unpredictable questions.
Imagine you’re a marketing analyst who wants to understand where to focus your promotional efforts. The first question you want to answer is, “What have been my most profitable products so far in 2010?” Next, you want to understand which customers are buying these products. As you think it through you realize that what you really want to know is which customers are not buying them. You click your way through a QlikView document. You come up with another question: “Which of those customers who aren't buying our most profitable products have been active buyers in the last two months?” And there you have it: your list of customers to target in a marketing campaign.
Using insights gleaned in QlikView, you can begin putting together a campaign to target specifically those customers who are active buyers but who are not buying the products you need them to be buying. QlikView helped you find not just the associated data (highlighted in white), but the unassociated data (highlighted in gray).
The really useful answer is rarely the initial one provided by a report or a specific piece of analysis. We’re not talking about a drill path; rather, we’re talking about a series of related questions based on a set of data associations. With Qlikview, data associations persist as the user conducts analysis. QlikView works the way your mind works. It’s intuitive and supports the natural flow of the insight discovery process, answering not just the obvious questions, but the unobvious questions as well.
QlikPower is an implementation partner for QlikView. If you would like to find out how QlikPower can help you fill out the form here.
Reproduced from QlikView's Blogroll
Posted by Noel Shannon on Thu, Jun 24, 2010 @ 05:50 AM
I attended a really excellent Sales Directors Forum last week
and it really woke me up to the demand out there in so many organisations for better data analysis. The organisers from
Treacy Consulting did a superb job in getting over 30 Sales Managers and Sales Directors from different organisations to meet to discuss the challenges facing them as we get through the recession. Among the topics discussed were their responses to the following questions
1. Do you expect a year on year increase in sales for 2010?
2. How has your sales headcount changed in the last 2 years?
3. What sales team headcount are you predicting for the next 12 months?
4. Does your company forecast an increase in bad debt provision/ collection for the next 12 months ?
In their responses to the questionnaire, which had been filled out in advance, the attendees had indicated that they were spending money on CRM systems (50%), Search Engine Optimisation (50%), and Blogging & Social Media (68%). But when the discussion started I was fascinated to note that many wanted better and faster data analysis to be made available to them for immediate decision making in so many different areas.
Value versus Volume
A large Drinks Manufacturer wanted better Key Performance Indicator (KPI) measurement to determine what product mix they should be promoting. He pointed out that in difficult times we need better data and data analysis so that we can understand how to grow value when we cannot grow volume. In order to do this we need to better understand the Promotional Mix and this is driven by Customer Insight. ‘Promotions that are not measured are a waste of money’ he said. Their product is the same drink but packaged and promoted in different ways. They have a large family pack, different size bottles and cans, different adverts and promotions and so on. There is obviously a different cost profile associated with the different product mixes and so the challenge is to better understand the value that can be extracted from promoting the optimal mix. This can only be done by constantly measuring the demand at a granular level and delivering this information accurately and in an intuitive way so that the decision makers can do a better job. For this to be done they would need better Key Performance Indicators and better data analysis.
Business Intelligence
QlikView is the Business Intelligence solution for this. Demand can be tracked over time – different outlets will have different social groupings and age profiles – these can be measured and mapped against the demand for the different products and for different time frames, even for different hours in the day. The Point of Sale system can deliver the information from all the outlets and this can be fed directly into
QlikView. Using its powerful associative software
QlikView can instantly analyse and show trends – and more importantly it can alert the user to unusual patterens and even predict future demand.
Posted by Ray Malendewicz on Wed, Jun 23, 2010 @ 04:48 AM
The objective of a Key Performance Indicator is to provide a tool to measure capability and, as a result of actions, improve the company.
Some while ago I worked for a software company that sold an application that included “Managerial Bench strength” as a Key Performance Indicator. It became quite a talking point because it created a lot of interest amongst our prospects and it sounded as if it could be valuable.
On the surface, this Key Performance Indicator appears to be related to the skills of a manager and if you carried out a Google search on it you would find that it is often used as a recruitment tool. In this case it is to identify skills and capabilities that are required in people you want to employ.
In fact the objective of this particular Key Performance indicator is to ensure that there are enough appropriately skilled people to move into managerial positions in the future. Its objective is to identify gaps in the future management of an organisation. It includes such measures as skill set, education and training undertaken amongst others. From this information it would be possible, using a Business Intelligence reporting tool to identify staff, who with appropriate training, could fill the gap.
As a talking point it was great as it would make people sit up and think that we really understood some key aspects of their business. As a Key Performance indicator it was rarely, if ever, used because it was too complicated to measure and rarely provided an indicator that was meaningful and could easily be measured.
This made me think of all the Key Performance indicators that are being used today. I am sure that some of you are suffering from over complicated measures that are very difficult to understand and make any improvements.
I would be really interested to hear from anyone suffering from too many or too complicated Key Performance Indicators. If I receive enough I will share them, without mentioning the organisation name, with you. I look forward to hearing from you.
If you would like to see some Key Performance Indicators and QlikView in action, try our World Cup App.
Posted by Ray Malendewicz on Tue, Jun 22, 2010 @ 05:32 AM
Love them or loathe them Key performance indicators drive your life whether you are in a private or public organisation. You can’t manage anything unless you “measure it” and “what gets measured gets done”, these are just two of the justifications for developing key performance indicators. The objective of producing Key Performance indicators is to give you the information to allow you to make better decisions.
In theory, Key Performance Indicators provide a series of measures against which you can judge success or failure. They are intended to be quantifiable measurements, agreed to beforehand, that reflect the critical success factors of an organization and their objective is to reduce the complex nature of an organisation to a small number of key measures. In practice, unless developed to improve the organisation, Key Performance Indicators can be a rod for your back. Too many Key Performance Indicators have no specific and achievable measures and they simply create more work without benefiting the organisation.
When you decide which Key Performance Indicators to use, it is important to use factors that are key to the organization reaching its goals. It is also important to keep the number of Key Performance Indicators small just to keep everyone's attention focused on achieving them. You should also define the Key Performance Indicators and keep them consistent from year to year. In addition you will need to set agreed and achievable targets for them.
Key Performance Indicators can, and should, be used by all parts of the organisation. They should be used to as indicators from which the necessary actions to rectify problems or resolve issues can be taken.
At QlikPower we have been able to spend more time with our customers developing appropriate Key performance indicators because we use QlikView as our Business Intelligence tool of choice. By not building a data warehouse we can spend more time working with a company to identifying and implement the key performance indicators they will use.
See how QlikView and Key performance indicators work with our new World Cup App.
Posted by Ray Malendewicz on Thu, Jun 17, 2010 @ 03:54 AM
There are lots of jokes making the rounds about the terrible goalkeeping error by Robert Green in the match against the USA earlier this week. The one I like most goes as follows: Following the mistake he made in the USA game Robert Green spent today in goal practising saving shots. He saved over 4,000 shots, from a player, without letting one into the net. As a result of this success he, and Emile Heskey, will rejoin the rest of the team practise tomorrow.
Whilst it is a good joke it also made me think about what Key performance indicators we should be using. For example for Green, should we be using number of shots saved or number of goals conceded as his key performance indicator. Using the shots saved he may have done well especially as he made one good save.
For Heskey it may be a little more difficult as he was considered as having a good game on Saturday. Using goals scored as his KPI he has a lot of improvement to make. If, on the other hand, we use shots on goal as the key performance indicator he would score quite highly. After all he only had a few chances. His best one, when put through, was saved by the goalkeeper but at least it was accurate. Using passing success as his Key performance indicator he will have done really well. But after all he has been picked as a goal scorer.
What all this nonsense does show you, however, is that it is important to develop the most appropriate key performance indicators for your organisations.
We at QlikPower work closely with our customers to produce Key performance indicators appropriate to their business.
For a bit of fun you might want to go to check out our Kick it and Qlik it app and become a world master of football facts by looking at the instant tournament insight developed in Qlikview.