Business Intelligence in Product Merchandising

By Eduardo Perez, Marketing Manager / Market5201
Does the information at hand give you a comprehensive view of your organization, the market, and your competition and allow you to drive change, adapt to the market, or eliminate inefficiencies? If not, I am afraid to tell you that you are not taking advantage of the full potential of the daily information generated. Big data, data mining, and business intelligence are concepts in almost every business conversation. We all know they are essential and should be a regular part of our decision-making, but are they?

What you don’t measure, you don’t control

Let’s be clear about one thing: at this point, computer systems can measure everything. Business intelligence was born almost 60 years ago as a data collection system to streamline the exchange of information.

Well into the 21st century, with artificial intelligence systems within reach of organizations, we must rethink how we collect, process, and present data.

Related Article: What’s Next for Category Management Analytics?

Business intelligence is based on three specific elements that must be configured in a certain way to generate a system:

  • Collecting and processing data in a constant, reliable, and exhaustive way allows us to trust and have a continuous flow of information.
  • Data analysis is the ability to draw conclusions from the information generated, delving into the details, and using basic and advanced statistics to discover patterns and predict future behavior.
  • Business analytics answer essential questions that affect decision-making through the knowledge generated by data analysis.

The key to modern business intelligence is the prioritization of speed of response and self-service information. We need fast and complete answers and the ability to drill down immediately without relying on others.

Product Marketing Paradise

Being able to transform my company’s operations, identify changes in trends and respond promptly to threats or opportunities is not a matter of luck or intuition.

Business intelligence can help marketing through:

  • Generating efficiency by automating data collection, giving staff more time to develop their activities and not collect.
  • Automating reports.
  • Providing real-time answers to product performance questions.
  • Help understand changes in consumer behavior.
  • Ability to drill down to specific details or to zoom in and see the big picture.
  • Generate projections based on historical behavior.
  • Create unified views of data from different sources.

What are we currently doing to improve decision-making through business intelligence? Do I have the data sorted, analyzed, and presented to support my decision-making?