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Data is the New Diamond

Want loyalty? Better put a ring on it.

An engagement ring traditionally is a sign of love and long-term fidelity. If you want the business equivalent – loyal customers who wouldn't dream of going elsewhere – then data is the new diamond.

Many of our clients have found that providing consistent, accurate and information-rich customer experiences across online and mobile channels have helped to retain customers, bring in new ones, and drive top-line growth. Whether it's using data collected from customers to analyze their preferences, gaining insights into your business from customer data so you can more effectively target marketing, or finding ways for customers to interact with your business when and how they want – data can take relationships to the next level.

No surprise then that analytics and BI are top technology priorities for CIOs in 2012 according to Gartner. The explosion of mobile, social and big data have accelerated business innovation, and BI is at the nexus of these mega trends. BI apps are being used in exciting new ways both internally for fact-based insights and externally for user empowerment. The opportunities to create new revenue streams and long-term customer loyalty are tremendous.

But some companies have shied away from using their BI platforms in support of self-service initiatives outside the firewall because they lack the required ease of use, scalability, and reliability. Some struggle with getting a 360-degree view of customer data across fragmented enterprise systems - and some have tried and failed.

If improving the customer experience is a priority for you this year, here are a few questions to ask about your current BI technology:

  • Is it robust enough to handle the larger number of users – can it scale easily?
  • Do you have the dashboard and data access ability to create an environment that gives your customers every report they want, with no training or special skills required?
  • Are you confident that your customers will get a consistent and accurate view of their data?
  • Can you easily provide a SaaS solution for your customers to create and access their own reports and analytics?

If you are not 100 percent sure of the answers, Information Builders can help. This is what we do better than anyone else: take your information, make sure it's correct and complete, and help you to empower your employees and customers through easy-to-use and highly scalable self-service reporting and analytics – with a low cost per user. And unlike other vendors, we also offer complementary solutions for data integration and data integrity - so you can get a 360-degree view of customer data that unlocks more business value.

We are proud to be named a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms and hope you find the report – and the other resources we have provided in this newsletter – to be useful. We look forward to hearing from you and demonstrating how our solutions for business intelligence, integration, and data integrity can help you increase customer acquisition and long-term loyalty.

Michael Corcoran
SVP, Chief Marketing Officer, Information Builders