Gartner: Cloud computing, Analytics Top 2010 Strategic Tech List …

Cloud computing and analytics have jumped front and center. Gartner renamed Business Intelligence (BI) to Analytics.

On the analytics front, Gartner said in a presentation: “We have reached the point in the improvement of performance and costs that we can afford to perform analytics and simulation for each and every action taken in the business. Not only will data center systems be able to do this, but mobile devices will have access to data and enough capability to perform analytics themselves, potentially enabling use of optimization and simulation everywhere and every time. This can be viewed as a third step in supporting operational business decisions.”

Gartner names analytics as the #2 most important category, only behind Cloud Computing. Analytics is becoming more important to all aspects of every business.

So what is analytics? It is purposeful focus on data. It requires mathematical analysis and algorithms on data, to compute Key Performance Indicators (KPI) that are valuable to measure the condition of the business.

Emcien offers analytics to detect product-buying patters with a focus to improve product mix and profitability. As product choices and market segments have grown to dizzying levels, companies struggle to have a finger on the pulse of their product mix, markets and profitability. What products are making money? What are customers buying? What are popular choice combinations? What is common across the market segments? What are the trends by market segment? What product choices should we offer?

Emcien’s analytics answers these questions with patented mathematical algorithms applied to sales data. Emcien’s analytics auto-detects what choices combinations customers are buying, the trends and which choice combinations are profitable. The product offering is the lifeblood of a company. At Emcien we equate product mix and choice mix to profit.  If your product mix is not aligned with what customers are buying, you will not make profits.  It is as simple as that!

Emcien’s analytics is built on sales data. Unlike web analytics, where is data is a bear, getting sales data is a relatively easy. This is usually the best quality data compared to anything else. The sales data is a true capture of the voice of the customer. It allows companies to see what customers are spending their money on. The value of Emcien’s analytics is visibility into customer choices, and more importantly, recommendations to increase profitability.

Analytics are very powerful as the data reveals Key Performance Indicators that offer continuous insight into the business. You can dispel a lot of beliefs that the company has based on gut feel and cooler talk. When you provide actual sales data driven insight, it has a profound positive impact on the company and the decisions. To convert analytics to action select KPI’s that are a part of your business process and budgeting process. This is key to showing improvement that is meaningful to the organization. As analytics gets more visibility in the C-suite, there is demand to produce KPIs that executives are measured on. This will help gain buy-in at executive levels as adoption of analytics grows.