| Business
Analytics
Understanding business events to
drive high-quality decisions
Business Analytics is the ability to understand
the business – and take action – through the
deployment and use of integrated data for both analytical
business intelligence and operational business intelligence
(BI).
Data from across your enterprise feeds high
profile applications such as customer relationship management
(CRM), sales force automation (SFA), and business performance
dashboards (BPM). Knowledge workers rely on data for critical
business analysis and to make decisions using tools for
segmentation, data mining, and query/reporting. Customer
service centers receive data alerts that trigger real-time
action tailored to specific events or customer behaviors.
Business Analytics encompasses what Baseline
calls “before, during, and after” analysis.
“Before” analysis refers to sophisticated models
that predict likely business events and customer behaviors
so that you can plan appropriate action. “After”
analysis – often referred to as “decision support”
– includes the reports and data mining activities
used to evaluate what happened so that you can make continuous
improvements in business operations. And “during”
analysis means a real-time understanding of business activities
and events that leads to personalized customer service and
targeted decisions.
» The
Baseline Viewpoint
» Your Value
» Best Practices
Business
Analytics End-User Categories
The Baseline
Viewpoint
Business-driven requirements for shared,
reusable data and knowledge worker self-sufficiency
Unlike our competitors, we see this sophisticated
set of capabilities as more than just a tools issue. Our
approach positions your company to respond quickly to changing
business needs. Your data is reusable across both analytical
and operational applications—and deployed incrementally
based on your business priorities. It is shared among business
functions. And your knowledge workers develop the self-sufficiency
they need to fulfill corporate strategy.
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Your
Value
Solving problems with data to address
strategic business initiatives
Baseline has been helping clients implement
business analytics applications to solve problems with data
for 15 years. Our clients use those applications to open
new markets, build customer relationships, meet regulatory
and compliance requirements, improve productivity, and manage
the challenges of mergers and acquisitions.
Baseline starts you down the road to success by applying
a handful of core principles to every business analytics
engagement: business-driven, alignment of business stakeholders
and IT developers, practical and actionable recommendations,
tailored solutions, and performance metrics. The bottom
line: your company realizes value at four levels –
financial, strategic, operational, and behavioral.
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Best
Practices
Baseline identifies best practices through
client engagements and participation in leading industry
associations, like The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI).
Best practices for business analytics include:
- Start with the business stakeholders
and make them accountable.
- Ensure that business needs drive IT
priorities and decisions. Revisit and adjust priorities
regularly.
- Align BI applications with the current
level of end users’ skills and knowledge –
neither too sophisticated nor too simple.
- Avoid “big bang” projects.
Build capabilities incrementally and apply lessons learned
as you go.
- Build credibility by delivering new
business value every 9-12 weeks.
- Define discrete requirements in the
following order: business, data, and functional requirements,
followed by technical specifications.
- Have business stakeholders define
and sign off on the business requirements before design
begins.
- Define service level agreements according
to business requirements.
- Emulate real usage scenarios for data
validation and user acceptance activities.
- Understand the differences between
BI development and traditional operational system SDLC.
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