How to create internal processes that lead to better data-driven business decisions

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Organizations struggling with new technology isn’t a new problem, but hope is not lost. There are quick ways to get your foot through the door using data intelligence and influencing process-driven innovation.

Context, context, context

When was the last time you saw a design fail because it was taken out of context (see examples here)? It’s easy to laugh it off when the contextual error is purely aesthetic. But if a misinterpretation of data results in your sales teams engaging prospects with an ineffective sales pitch, the wrong product, and an irrelevant marketing program, the impact can be far worse.

In a 2016 white paper, Forrester listed three prerequisites that drive predictive marketing success:

• Refresh capabilities to boost insight-driven engagement
• Ensure sales and marketing alignment through lead processes
• Gather useful data to inform predictive algorithms

What these points summarize is that different pieces of a big picture are needed to get the customer view right. With shiny new toys like data automation and predictive analytics, we need to ensure first that the people using the data know what to do with it. In short, business intelligence improvements start from within the organization. It is also akin to applying an internal marketing funnel to put a process into perspective.

There are many ways for businesses to improve their intelligence. But the challenge is to combine a very broad view of context in a specific time frame (e.g. a market segment and the products and campaigns targeting it) with a multitude of sharply focused views of context in real time (e.g. interactions and experience involving a customer).

How can your business reconcile those broad and focused views to define the best decisions and actions? Your stakeholders—sales, marketing, or customer experience—need to apply the same lenses as an external customer to comprehend how data is accessed and, more importantly, in what context. Then, you need to combine all of their intelligence and related capabilities so you can see the connection.

People first—always

We have already identified sales and marketing as the most active users of data within an organization, but this is based on the functional needs of their roles. Similar to how marketers use personas to help them find their best customers, a lens can also be applied to help us understand what a salesperson or a marketer needs. Then, we can apply that to a defined lead generation workflow and map that to success indicators to identify what works and what doesn’t.

As the Aberdeen Group pointed out, “strongly aligned marketing and sales teams are 53 percent more likely to ensure relevant value propositions aligned to buyers’ business challenges.” The idea of a strongly aligned team refers to having a set of shared objectives, priorities, and strategic and tactical operational processes, goals, and resources.

Understanding what a salesperson needs vs what a marketer needs and putting them together into a shared program not only accelerates the alignment process between these two functions but also helps the analytics team build dashboards efficiently. We can also apply a particular set of goals tied to these different roles, and further customize the data output according to the actual user needs at any given time.

Linear or cyclical?

Once you have initiated an alignment between internal stakeholders and begin to design shared objectives within functions and cross-functions, a process of continuous realignment and refinement needs to be set in place. But how do you decide if the process should be linear or cyclical?

One needs to only look at the shared priority of your stakeholders—the customer. While not all organizations have successfully applied measurements of customer lifetime value (CLV), it is essential to a business that wants to be customer-centric. Why is CLV important? It tells us many things that can help maximize sales and marketing efforts, such as:

• The potential worth or contribution your customer can bring
• How to move your most desired (i.e. more valuable) customers through each stage of the buyer’s journey
• Which prospects to focus on with your limited resources