Sell anything to anyone
If people could sell ‘meteor pills’ in 1910, in the 21th century you can sell anything. We’ve certainly come a long since then and with technology advancing by leaps and bounds, the opportunities to expand your business are virtually limitless. Technology can be your best friend or your worst enemy; it all depends on how you use it. With that being said, you can take advantage of the cutting-edge platforms and applications, provided to you with the right system or marketing strategy. This is where market intelligence comes into play. Market intelligence (MI) is the process of gathering, analyzing and making sense of vast amounts of data generated through a business’ daily operations. In a world where the competition is fierce as never before, you need to keep a close eye on what the competitors are doing. You certainly don’t to fall behind them, and this is where market intelligence becomes your best friend, provided that you use it wisely. Closely akin to market intelligence, Business Intelligence is a somewhat broader than MI. Business Intelligence (BI) comprises various tools, applications and methods that help businesses and organizations gather data from internal or external systems, make a thorough analysis, create reports and dashboards based on the data collected. Granted, you first need to have a grasp on the various applications of business intelligence before deciding to utilize them. Through BI applications you can improve the decision making process, increase efficiency through cutting operational costs, thus gaining an edge over the competition. Business continuity is of paramount importance. With that being said, you need to look under the hood for hidden patterns and customer trends. Once again, BI applications can be very useful to keeping your business up-to-date with the latest trends and customer behavior.
Here is how you can benefit from various tools of market intelligence
– Using social media monitoring
While social medias have been around for more than a decade, it is only recently that business are starting to use social media intelligence tools. When you think of the billion of interactions that happen every day on various social networking sites, you can’t help but wonder: how does one makes sense of the huge amount of data in the form of pictures, posts, tweets, etc? Short answer, you can take advantage of tools and systems that gather and analyze data from social networking sites.
– Using cloud computing
With the sheer amount of data you generate from your daily business operations, you need to store all your data. Storing is not enough- you also need to access your data from every device, at any time. On the other hand, vast amount of data require more processing power. Above all, you need an effective marketing strategy to gain an edge over the competition. You can do this and much more using the endless resources that the cloud offers.
-Using Business Intelligence (BI) applications
Business Intelligence is the latest gold rush among entrepreneurs. Through BI tools, such as data mining, text mining, predictive analysis and big data analytics, you can get to know your customers, by better understanding their needs and preferences. Raw data is turned into valuable insights through the use of cutting-edge applications. Using Business Intelligence offers significant advantage when trying to make strategic decisions. Having anytime access to organize data means that you can discover inefficient business processes and hidden patterns identify areas of strength and weakness and discover new opportunities, all of which contributes to a better understanding of a company’s operations and challenges. The right application of business intelligence gives you the ability to understand or even predict an individual customer or segment’s needs, preferences and habits. This way you can anticipate more opportunities to sell, deliver better service and even provide targeted marketing campaigns.
With so many advanced systems at your fingertips, you might turn raw data into gold. You too, have the Midas Touch!