CONTACT CENTER BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

BI is a set of techniques and tools for collecting and interpreting raw data to create meaningful and valuable information for business managers and decision-makers.

BI technologies can handle large amounts of structured and unstructured data to assist in identifying and developing new strategic business opportunities. The goal is to make it easy to access large amounts of data and make interpretation simple enough, where in the past, this data remained virtually untouched.

Business intelligence (BI) is an umbrella term that includes the applications, infrastructure and tools, and best practices that enable access to and analysis of information to improve and optimize decisions and performance. BI is the closest thing to a crystal ball! It gives you insights into the future. This “forward-looking” perspective allows you to plan what services you provide and don’t provide in the contact center.

First step in developing BI platform is creating an overall strategy. You want to consider the reason why data is being collected. What kinds of decisions will be made from this data and its analysis? What types of problems are expected to be resolved? What answers are you looking for? Have the end in mind when you ask yourself these questions.

CEOs are challenged to access all the data their organizations collect and store. Companies collect data on customers in various ways.

The most common types of data are:
– Sales KPI’s
– Quality Assurance
– Customer Service KPI’s
– Customer Satisfaction
– Accounting
– Inventories

CEO’s and managers are concerned that they lack good tools for data-driven decision-making, which is hampered by the inability to access data promptly.

CEOs cannot get data from a coherent single source, like an integrated dashboard. Today, data arrives from multiple systems in multiple formats, with some reports accessible through online portals and others delivered via email. They are limited in their access to the data, which they can only slice, dice, and filter. There is also a lack of real-time and mobile access.

Managers can make more effective decisions with the proper tools. BI intends to cross-pollinate this vast amount of significant data to provide greater insights in business decision-making.

There are many BI tools, but you must also get the systems that provide Data. Analytical processing includes hosted call center platforms, web applications, market research, data mining, CRM activities, and decision-support systems.

Business intelligence tools are application software designed to retrieve, analyze, transform, and report data for business intelligence. The tools generally read data that have been previously stored, often, though not necessarily, in a data warehouse or data mart.

BI tools allow you to uncover the answers to questions that drive your business. Imagine data that debunks industry myths or insights – more than just sales data to profitable and not-so-profitable products. BI tools enable you to access and combine relevant data for unbiased predictions, analysis, and reporting. Today’s BI applications automate reporting, reducing managers' time to gather and assemble all the required data into a usable format. The content is customized to each user; create dashboards, reports, and data visualizations easily within one user experience. No need to call the helpdesk!

BI tools source data from your spreadsheets to Twitter data and everything in-between. For example, your contact center has numerous applications that store customer information in a database. Like most organizations, new application/databases are added on and lack integration so they become silos. Today's Common databases include MS Access, Oracle, DB2, Informix, SQL, MySQL, Amazon SimpleDB, and others. Flat files, web services, and other sources such as RSS feeds are also data sources.

Companies that can extract insights from data will not only lead, but also crush the competition. The new BI tools of the 21st Century are the crystal ball companies need today to compete.

– Know your KPI’s in real time.
– Hard data eliminates the guesswork. Running a business shouldn’t be like gambling.
– Get answers faster. Slice and dice the data at your fingertips, eliminating volumes of old printed reports.
– Get automated reports – data when and where you need it – Insights into customer behavior.
– Identify cross-selling, upselling opportunities.
– Internal process improvement and synergies.
– See where your business has been, where it is now, and where it is heading.

Managers no longer must wing it and make decisions based on gut feelings or follow the industry's trends. Making decisions based on accurate, measurable, objective data leads to decisive choices.

You hear it all the time: “It’s a solid plan,” yet the project went sideways because the execution of the plan wasn’t as good as the plan itself.

Bad execution hurts all projects, including BI implementations. While intentions were good, BI projects fail when there are not enough employees with the right skills to deliver on time, when the project is poorly managed, or when funding or executive support is scarce. If you can’t allocate the correct number of dollars, people, and resources to the project, it’s best to wait and avoid the project from running into the ground.

Some companies will try to outsource this project only to find they missed valuable sources of information. The outsourcer didn’t know about the closet stacked with hard drives filled with old databases, or that an analyst recently retired and the entire database is stored on his hard drive. Only folks on the inside know about these little hideaways of data. Even if they know they exist, obtaining access is the next hurdle. Outside companies don’t have the same “in” as internal employees.

BI projects are complex and require the cooperation of many departments within the organization. Quality coordination and stakeholder involvement can guide the project to a successful conclusion, where CEOs and managers have all the data they need at their fingertips.