IBM Watson

Social media analytics - Tools that listen to social media can tell you what consumers are saying, but they can’t tell you how to act on what you find. If you think social media analytics is just about tracking your Facebook mentions, think again. Social data can unearth a trove of insights that go far beyond monitoring your brand. With the right analytics tools you can tap into social conversations to validate product ideas, improve the customer experience, keep tabs on competitors, streamline your supply chain… and more.

Using sales data to identify future opportunities - Sales data shows what customers bought and makes more accurate forecasts of future sales activity possible. But link this data to CRM, website, marketing and social media data and you can uncover a great deal more; age groups, gender, average income, family size and internet usage. All of which can all enable more strategic decisions based on who you are targeting. Now you can look at what a customer purchased and use that data to predict when they’ll buy again, or determine if its appropriate to offer complementary products for cross-sell opportunities.Keep in mind that according to Forbes, data driven organisations are 23 times more likely to acquire customers, 6 times as likely to retain those customers, and 19 times as likely to be profitable as a result.

Improve or enhance products and services - Reviews, social media data, product returns and email opens, click throughs and conversion rates all help build a comprehensive picture of how customers respond to specific products and services. Apply your insights to repeat tactics, practices and enhancements that work, or use data to identify where you need to overhaul or improve your product lines, services or policies to meet and exceed customer expectations.

Planning, budgeting and forecasting - Your finance team is experienced at using financial data. But imagine if they could use operational data to improve and enhance planning, budgeting and forecasting processes.By identifying and understanding the inter-relationships between supply chain problems, HR trends, product quality issues and even the weather – they’ll be able to respond more quickly to market changes and generate more accurate forecasts, faster.

Analyse service agent performance - The success of your customer service organisation depends on the performance of its agents. So, imagine being able to investigate a dip in customer service ratings, by analysing the last 10,000 cases your agents resolved. Along the way, you decide to identify what really drives service satisfaction and how to improve on it. Evaluating average call duration for different cases is just the start. You also want to see if agent training level or case severity has any significant bearing on customer ratings. In other words, you’re on a mission to pin down and understand the WHY behind what’s happening.

Fine tune promotions and campaigns - Analysing the results of promotions and finding the connections between a campaign and related sales is no easy task. Did one promotion perform better than others in different locations or markets? Finding the right marketing promotion can be a challenge, but when done right it can draw a whole new audience of customers through your doors. Watson Analytics can help marketing teams find the most important insights from your customer data and identify the main drivers of Sales, so they can generate more impressive returns when driving your next marketing campaign.

Improve operations - Data can offer insight on each operational phase, making it possible to work backwards and use data to identify what’s happening that’s holding operations and processes back. Eliminating doubt, uncertainty or conjecture in the process. Data can help identify faults in manufacturing processes, or it can be used to ensure your delivery routes are the most efficient and effective. Your management teams can also analyse data relationships, patterns and trends to find better ways to control inventory and distribution.