The explosion in big data over the past decade has the potential to deliver incredible business opportunities, especially in the sales and marketing arena. However a survey, carried out by sales and marketing research company CSO Insights, found that you can have too much of a good thing.
Data overload is a real, and potentially costly, phenomena and CSO Insight’s survey flagged up the startling statistic that 90% of sales leaders believe reps miss opportunities because of information overload. Or to put it another way, your sales force may well be data rich but insight poor.
The team behind Power BI (Microsoft’s suite of business analytics tools) have identified a reliance on spreadsheets and manually updated databases as the chief culprits in any data overload scenario. Last week they published a timely blog post* outlining how data visualization can transform your sales process. The post lists three of the ways Power BI can transform your sales process:
Instant Reports
Companies are always trying to find new ways to increase productivity. For a sales team, that can mean eliminating difficult and time-consuming manual reports and replacing them with a technology partner that can sort through data from myriad sources and produce actionable insights. Pipeline reports and sales trends can be generated in hours, minutes and sometimes seconds—instead of days—leaving you plenty of extra time to review and develop thoughtful strategies.
Data Share Across Departments
For your sales team to succeed, your company’s other departments also need analytical success. Because Power BI supports nearly 60 applications, different departments can import the data they’ve collected to share with each other and provide deeper insight. When a sales team can see where marketing efforts have succeeded, for example, they can more effectively realign their strategies.
Quota Management
In an ever-changing market, setting realistic quotas proves challenging, especially when your sales success depends on variables like region, month and customer segment. Power BI eliminates the difficulty by gathering past and present data—in one place—so you can set attainable goals for the future.
And one final thought … with a predicted 4,300 percent increase in annual data production by 2020, possibly your sales and marketing teams are not waving, but drowning.
* blogs.office.com/2016/06/21/3-ways-power-bi-can-help-your-sales-team-succeed/