Why Proof BusinessGPS™, and how does it work?

Proof BusinessGPS was created with a clear vision in mind – to help business leaders make informed decisions by providing these with real-time business insights – including the past performance of the business but also projections on the future performance of their business.

The development of what was to become Proof BusinessGPS started more than a decade ago when the company’s founders began working on the idea of automating what was already then, an established methodology called Marketing Mix Modeling.

This methodology was and still is the “gold standard” when analyzing the impact of current marketing efforts and when building mathematical models to make projections on the future impact of planned marketing engagements.

These mathematical models used in this methodology are called Regression Models and the mathematics used to create these has been used by analysts for decades and has proven its accuracy time and time again.

But the traditional way of creating regression models comes with its own set of challenges. It’s often done manually and therefore incredibly slow and costly.

Traditionally, it has also often been limited in scope and often cannot be updated or tweaked with new data variables, once the model has been created – a common requirement that analysts are faced with when, for example, the business landscape changes.

This means that the model can easily get skewed and is no longer accurate when it comes to making future projections.

Proof BusinessGPS was developed to solve these challenges.

Delivering business insights quickly and reliably must be based on having automated access to both historical data AND the latest available, real-time, data and to be able to update the regression models as the operating landscape changes and new requirements are introduced.

Also, users, today must have the full freedom to create as many regression models as they want, be able to update these whenever they need to, and through experimentation extract and unlock the business insights that may be hiding deep inside their data.

The only way this can be done, though, is if the following three criteria are met:

1. The solution is delivered through the cloud

2. It’s easy for a regular business user to consume

3. And the cost is kept at a reasonable level

We tick all those boxes with Proof BusinessGPS.

But before we start looking at how Proof BusinessGPS works, let’s ask ourselves why customers of all sizes and industries need the tool.

Unsurprisingly, it’s all about time and money.

We live in a world where changes in the business environments are quick, often unexpected, and sometimes even dramatic. These changes, shifts, and transitions are felt particularly hard by business leaders whose priorities are spread over time.

Things they might be working on right now may only impact the business months or in some cases even years from now.

One example of this is marketing.

As you know, marketing is a function where the end goal is to try to deliver on one or many business outcomes. These outcomes are often critical to a company and range from customer acquisition, product marketing to awareness- and brand building, just to name a few.

But in times of uncertainty, business leaders need to know that the money they spend on marketing is well spent. After all, that money could have been spent elsewhere.

Any successful business is making decisions on what to invest in based on expected returns of investments.

This goes for product development, sales, and of course marketing. And in marketing, the term most often used to describe the return on investment on marketing is ROMI. Return on Marketing Investment.

There is, however, a fundamental shortcoming in measuring ROMI.

Whilst it’s absolutely fundamental when measuring how well a specific marketing campaign is performing, it’s only measuring the quantitative impact of single marketing activity.

For example, $100K spent on marketing might have generated $1 million dollars worth of sales leading to a calculated Return on Marketing Investment of 10x.

The challenge here is that this way of looking at results can be very misleading as it says nothing about the qualitative impact of marketing and not take into consideration the full mix of marketing activities and its impact on other priorities that go beyond pure sales numbers.

Thing is, business leaders also need to know how well marketing is performing against the key business priorities. And not just how well marketing performed in the past. But the ability to make projections on the future impact of marketing.

What they need is a solution that uses historical data from a wide range of data sources. A solution that is always up to date with the latest data. And if the business environment changes, allows the user to build alternative routes to reach the target by recalculating a new route to value.

A solution that guides the user to a target destination, just like a GPS device guides a traveler to his destination, Proof BusinessGPS helps a business define the route to better outcomes.