Marketing is one field where measures such as KPI’s (key performance indicators) and metrics (measures viewed across a time frame) are vital to performance. Common measures include

· % market share
· % market growth
· revenue
· profit
· sale volume

But the list is endless. Because of this Business Intelligence is particularly valuable to marketing departments.

Data warehousing and OLAP (online analytical processing) cubes allow marketing personnel to drill down through the organisational hierarchy and filter at any level of any number of dimensions. There is also no limit to the number of measures that can be included in the analysis, including measures calculated from other measures. This gives a highly flexible performance overview.

Performance dashboards are customised views of your own individual key performance metrics often shown as a combination of charts with the possibility of spreadsheets included in the dashboard view. If an area interests you, you can click on the chart to drill down to a more detailed view of the information.

Metric scorecards are also of value to marketing departments, and show a personalised summary of KPI’s, indicating improvements from period to period, and highlighting areas of concern in red or amber.

Alerts can be automatically emailed to a pre-selected list of recipients when a KPI falls into the red zone, or below a level of your own choosing.

All of the above technology is available through the market-leading IBM Cognos range of Business Intelligence solutions.