What are analytics platforms and business intelligence platforms?

Analytics platforms and business intelligence tools are software applications that help businesses collect, store, and analyse data to make informed decisions. These tools can be used to visualise data, build reports and dashboards, and perform advanced analytics, such as predictive modelling and machine learning.

A customer data platform (CDP) is a specialised type of analytics platform that is designed to help businesses manage and analyse customer data. CDPs allow businesses to collect and integrate data from multiple sources, such as web analytics, CRM systems, and social media, and use that data to create a single, comprehensive view of their customers.

Setting up an analytics platform or business intelligence tool.

There are a few steps involved in setting up an analytics platform or business intelligence tool:

1. Identify your data needs: The first step is to understand your business goals and data requirements. This will help you determine which type of tool is right for you and which features you need.
2. Choose a tool: There are many different analytics platforms and business intelligence tools available, so it’s important to research and compare different options to find the one that best meets your needs.
3. Integrate your data: Once you have chosen a tool, you’ll need to integrate your data into the platform. This typically involves extracting data from multiple systems and databases, cleaning and transforming the data, and loading it into the platform.
4. Set up reports and dashboards: With your data integrated into the platform, you can start building reports and dashboards to visualise and analyse your data.
5. Use the more advanced features: With many analytics platforms, advanced features like machine learning models and customer segmentation are built right in. Using these features will mean you’re well on your way to being a data-driven, modern organisation.
6. Ongoing maintenance: Analytics platforms and business intelligence tools require ongoing maintenance to ensure that your data is accurate and up-to-date. This may involve regular data updates, data cleansing, and monitoring and troubleshooting.

Industry-leading platforms.

There are many analytics platforms that are well-suited for B2B and B2C organisations – whether you play in the high or low-volume game. Here are a few of the market-leading business intelligence tools:

1. Tableau: Tableau is a powerful analytics platform that allows users to visualise and analyse data in a variety of formats, including charts, maps, and dashboards. It is particularly well-suited for B2B and B2C organisations, as it offers advanced features for data blending and collaboration.
2. Power BI: Power BI is a hybrid cloud and desktop-based analytics platform sitting within the Microsoft service offering. It offers data pipelines and reports development, enabling end-users to build reports and dashboards using pre-qualified and endorsed data sets. Given it is a Microsoft product, this BI tool is well-suited to organisations already using Microsoft products for other parts of the business.
3. Looker: Looker is a data platform that siting within the Google service offering. It is cloud-native, allowing allows users to build custom dashboards and reports using data from a variety of sources in the cloud. Alongside Google’s data warehousing capabilities in the Google Cloud Platform, Looker is a formidable option for organisations, particularly those using Google products for their day-to-day operations.

Each of these business intelligence tools is a great option, and often the selection is made primarily on the basis of existing software in use at the organisation – usually Microsoft or Google.

For organisations collecting behavioural data, a behavioural analytics platform like Amplitude or Mixpanel may make more sense than – or complement – the above business intelligence tools. In contrast with business intelligence tools which work best with structured rigid datasets, behavioural analytics platforms are designed to help businesses track and analyse user behaviour and engagement. They are particularly well-suited for companies that want to understand how users interact with their products or services in detail. They specialise in exploratory analysis and root-cause analysis-driven analysis, uncovering insights from the largest datasets imaginable.

Both Amplitude and Mixpanel offer direct integration with many leading marketing automation platforms, closing the feedback loop between analytics and marketing implementation.

Practical example.

Let’s talk about ACME Widgets, a B2C organisation that sells propane and propane accessories. ACME’s lowest-hanging fruit is using an analytics platform to improve its sales and marketing efforts. By integrating data from their CRM system, web analytics, and social media, the organisation can create a single, comprehensive view of their customers and their needs.

Using the analytics platform, the organisation can build reports and dashboards to visualise and analyse data on customer demographics, sales trends, and product performance. This can help them identify new product opportunities, target marketing efforts, and optimise their sales process.

The organisation can also use the analytics platform to perform advanced analytics, such as predictive modelling and machine learning. For example, they could use predictive modelling to identify which customers are most likely to make a purchase, and then target marketing efforts towards those customers.

If ACME chooses the right platform, then the platform may even assist in the experimentation and optimisation of its app, website and marketing content – directly measuring and reporting on the results in a statistically significant manner.

By investing in an analytics platform, ACME can drive growth and improve efficiency, leading to a positive ROI for their investment.

So why settle for less?

We’ll help you choose the right analytics platform for your organisation.