BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE. Marketing Software Survey 2014

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1 Marketing Software Survey 2014 BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE A snapshot of the current software products & platforms made for and used by marketers across industries.

2 CONTENTS Business Intelligence: Mini Report 2 on Top categories of Marketing Operations 3 Business Intelligence Stats Business Intelligence (BI) and Business Analytics: an overview and a comparison 5 Why business intelligence matters and where is it heading? 7 What users are saying? Survey Results 8 Key Takeaways 9 Footnotes 10 About MTA 11 Page 2

3 BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE Earlier this year, we released the QEDBaton B2B Marketing Technology Spend Report 2014 an overview and trend analysis of the investment choices marketers are making in key areas of marketing technology ¹. Needless to say, B2B marketers are spoilt for choice with a plethora of investment options to support any and every marketing initiative. This is an opportunity, because it means there is a solution for everything. This is also a challenge, because making an investment choice is that much riskier and complex. Our report surveyed a large sample of B2B marketers to reveal key investment trends in each of the key areas of marketing technology ², with the aim of making your choices more informed. Marketing Operations emerged among the key areas of marketing technology investment at the present time. In this mini report, we deep dive into Business Intelligence as one of the five most important ³ categories of Marketing Operations. The mini reports will explore why Business Intelligence is seeing traction, critical features of technology solutions for Business Intelligence and survey results about the technologies being deployed to derive business intelligence by B2B marketers around the world. Nucleus Research predicts that the BI market with total BI revenue at $14.4 billion for 2013, is projected to grow to $114 billion by 2018 Page 3

4 BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE FACTS 2014 The BI market with total BI revenue at $14.4 billion for 2013, is projected to grow to $114 billion by 2018 ROI for business intelligence projects is over 10,000%, For every dollar spent on BI, researchers found that $10.66 is made back. Companies that use analytics are 5 times more likely to make faster decisions. 99.5% of new data is never analyzed or used. 250,000 people had their genomes analyzed with BI tools in Also BI can predict human location 80 weeks into the future. Page 4

5 BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE & BUSINESS ANALYTICS: AN OVERVIEW AND A COMPARISON If marketing data is about who the best prospects and customers are, intelligence and analytics are about the what, why and where of current performance, future customer needs and the business opportunities emerging out of that intelligence. The debate on the relationship between intelligence and analytics is an ongoing one, and continues to be an area of confusion for the B2B marketer who must make investments on either pay off in terms of numbers. The emerging consensus from the debate seems to indicate that analytics is a sub-set of intelligence. Here is our view. Business Intelligence of which marketing intelligence (as distinct from market intelligence) is essentially a part - provides dashboards of the current performance levels based on pre-configured KPIs and metrics. For various functions including marketing, BI red flags areas of non-performance and gaps; and indicates directions for course correction in relatively real time. It drills through mountains of performance related data and presents key metrics to stakeholders in a standard format allowing for easy assessment and comparison. However, any analysis that needs to be performed on the numbers usually needs to be done by the user herself, most likely on excel, and outside the BI engine itself. That takes the data right back into the realm of unstandardized and subjective. It is essentially about organizational performance against strategic goals. The one version of the truth across the organization enabling more informed, consistent and speedier data-based decision making Business Analytics of which marketing analytics is essentially a part is all about deep interaction with data at a granular level. Unlike business intelligence, analytics is all about trawling through data minutiae to reveal or discover potentially invisible trends, gaps and opportunities. It is designed to integrate new scenarios and unanticipated dynamics or questions into the analysis of customer and performance data and is not constrained by predetermined boundaries. The outcomes are deep strategic insights into current performance as well as predictive scenarios based on data modeling for future strategies. It is an invaluable tool for ongoing innovation as well as up selling and retention/ loyalty. The technology enabled analytics are therefore streets ahead of what an operating manager could work out on excel in terms of richness. It is essentially about anticipating and harnessing market opportunities based on data. Page 5

6 BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE & BUSINESS ANALYTICS: AN OVERVIEW AND A COMPARISON Intelligence and analytics have different inputs and therefore offer distinctly different outputs for marketers. That said, most technology platforms in this space offer both - business intelligence and analytics solutions. Pure BI offerings are forward integrating to offer analytics and agile business intelligence is the flavor of the moment. There are also stand-alone dashboard offerings available! So in spite of the efforts to make distinctions as we have above, the lines are blurred when it comes to choosing a technology partner. We hope this context will make it somewhat easier for our readers to traverse the marketing automation landscape keeping their unique strategic needs in mind. Page 6

7 WHY BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE MATTERS & WHERE IS IT HEADING? In the purest sense, business intelligence analyses business data from various sources against predetermined metrics and KPIs to puts the results onto a common platform or a dashboard - for executives. It enables one version of the truth across the organization thus enabling more informed, consistent and speedier data-based decision making. BI is a critical tool because it makes sense of swathes of performance related data across various functions, measures it against performance goals and KPIs, and organizes it in a way that enables strategic decision making on the future course of action. It is about setting course, staying on course and course correction backed by solid performance related data. Much depends on how marketers actually use the intelligence generated in the form of fairly static, albeit relatively real time reports. The landscape has long been dominated by heavyweights like SAP, SAS, Oracle, IBM and Microsoft, which got into the game early and created black box BI engines which marketers happily left to the IT guys for evaluation and implementation. But today these heavyweights are jostling for space with nimble new players who are redefining what BI can mean to the users. Traditional notions of BI have already been turned upside down with the new directions BI is taking in No longer is BI some staid, one-sided dashboard that gives leadership the bird s eye view of organizational performance so they can make top-down strategic changes in goals. Gone are the days when CXOs and managers asked IT to run queries or generate reports on limited parameters, with nary a thought to how the report was created. And long forgotten is the era when BI solutions took months if not years to program, integrate and deliver. Welcome agile BI, DIY or self-service BI, BI on the cloud, Mobile BI and visual data analysis. Simpler user interfaces, advanced search capability and embedded BI is the way forward. Whether B2B marketers invest in developing their own BI engine, buy software or use a SaaS BI solution, BI and indeed analytics is becoming democratized. It is not just for big companies with big data but for small marketers with, well, small data, sourced from the virtual world and other equally disparate sources. In addition to BI, it is important to shore up with the right data management tools collection and warehousing data; as well as analytics solutions that drive competitive advantage. In the crowded BI technology platform space, B2B marketers need to asses the strategic focus of BI and choose a technology partner or solution accordingly. Some of the considerations in making this decision could include the make, buy or rent decision; level of integration required with existing systems and platforms; technical compatibility and business considerations; and most important -ability of the organization to commit to a data management mindset across levels and functions in order to optimize BI investment returns. Page 7

8 WHAT USERS ARE SAYING: SURVEY RESULTS An online survey ⁴ conducted by QEDBaton polled over 135 senior B2B sales and marketing executives from around the world on their use of marketing operations technologies. Of the respondents, about 60% of large companies and 38% of the small companies had made investments into BI. Big players like Oracle, SAP and Microsoft dominated the field, accounting for almost 50% of deployments, especially with large companies. However, smaller B2B marketers were also getting into the fray with independent and newer BI solutions such as Good Data, Qlik View and Tableau finding mention. 14% respondents were unaware of the specific BI solution deployed. Usage Trends of Marketing Analytics Tools 38% Small 27.0% 20.3% 13.6% No 59% Yes 41% 11.9% 10.2% 6.8% 60% Large Size of Business SAP Others I Don't Microsoft Oracle Know / Not Sure SAS 5.1% 5.1% QlikView Tableau Top Tools Used Page 8

9 KEY TAKEAWAYS In a 2014 InformationWeek survey ⁵ on Analytics, BI, and Information Management, respondents cite data quality as the key challenge for successful BI or analytics implementation. 47% list experience as being scarce and expensive in making the most of these platform and solutions. 58% list "accessing relevant, timely or reliable data" as their organization's biggest impediment to success regarding information management. Challenges with BI continue to be around getting data into the system consistently, as well as user adoption and collaboration. The BI solution landscape is nearly as dynamic as the businesses that need to deploy them! User skills is a challenge that B2B marketers need to fast address. Luckily for marketers, BI solutions providers too are working hard to ensure that you don t have to be a PHD in statistics to derive optimal results from their platforms and tools. Page 9

10 FOOTNOTES 1.The structure of the report and survey was based on Scott Brinker s super graphic on the same topic which divides marketing technology into six super categories, each with a set of sub-categories. 2.Key areas of marketing technology: Our report built upon Scott s work, which divided marketing technology into 6 key areas, each of which was further divided into sub-categories. The 6 areas were: Marke ng Experience Marke ng Opertaions Middleware Backbone Pla orms Infrastracture Marke ng Enviroment Each key area was further divided into sub-categories. 3. Technologies serving Marketing Operations can be classified into 9 sub-categories. These are: Marke ng analy cs Marke ng data Business intelligence Channel/ local marke ng Web and mobile analy cs Dashboards Digital asset management Marke ng resource management Agile and project management In the survey conducted for the QEDBaton B2B Marketing Technology Spend Report 2014, 5 of these subcategories (in bold) enjoyed the most investment or intent to invest, as well as seemed the most crowded in terms of technology products available. This series of mini reports delve deeper into these 5 sub-categories to understand why they are attracting the maximum B2B marketing investments and what the wide ranging solutions encapsulate. 4. About the survey: an online survey with 135 plus responses. Respondents profile: ŸSenior sales and marketing professionals or senior management executives ŸPrimarily based in USA, UK, Canada, Australia, India, Germany ŸOrganizations are either B2B or both B2B and B2C marketers, ranging from small to medium and large firms (<$10 million to over $1 billion ) ŸPrimarily in the IT/Software, manufacturing, advertising or media/pr, construction/ engineering or telecom sectors ŸFor more information on the survey, please XYZ@qedbaton.com 5. Informationweek link: Page 10

11 ABOUT MARTECH ADVISOR MarTech Advisor is the world s Leading Source of Marketing Technology News, Unbiased Research, Product Reviews & Expert Commentary. MarTech Advisor reaches and informs a world-wide audience of over 250,000 sales & marketing professionals via its newsletters and LinkedIn group. Our focus at MarTech Advisor is to help the sales & marketing professional stay on top of the multitude of rapidly evolving marketing software products. Our content assists our readers in comparing, researching and selecting the right products and platforms to meet their marketing objectives. Contact Us: On the web info@martechadvisor.com Twitter: Twitter.com/MarTechAdvisor Join the world's leading sales & marketing group on LinkedIn: Page 11