To get started, there are some elements that a customer must have in place before they can start using Proof BusinessGPS. And also a few steps to follow to actually get started using the tool. Here comes the 5 elements/steps that need to be taken into consideration step by step.
First of all, they need to have some sort of an idea of what it is the business wants to measure.
Let’s say senior leadership is interested to know how marketing is impacting online sales of a specific product in a specific country.
The first objective for a business leader is to formalize this need into specific business questions that an analyst can start working on.
In this case, the business question could be, What impact does our current marketing tactics have on online sales of let’s say a particular flat-screen TV, in let’s say the United Kingdom.
The second element needed is sales and marketing data – both historical and real-time data. The main requirement is that the data must be relevant to the business question. The analyst working in the tool must ask him or herself.
What data do I need to in the regression model when trying to answer the business question?
In our example case, the clue is in the question. To make sure the outcome is accurate, the analyst would need access to the country- and product-specific sales data, for example through Salesforce.
And they also would need access to historical marketing data from all relevant marketing channels that have been used to market the product in that particular country. For example, data generated in their social media engagement with prospects, email campaigns just to name a few.
Should the analysts want to dive deeper into answering the business question, additional data can be added. Data such as consumer confidence data, brand reputation data, customer satisfaction data, or anything else that may have had a positive or negative impact on the actual effect.
To help customers get access to their data, we at Proof have partnered up with several data aggregators. Through these, the analyst working in the tool will be able to easily ingest data into the tool. Data that today may be spread out over multiple channels and formats but thanks to the data integration, can easily be accessed by Proof BusinessGPS.
Once an analyst has ingested all relevant data into Proof, he or she is now ready to start working on creating a regression model, designed to answer the business question.
Working in the tool, the analyst will select data variables he or she thinks might impact the objective, set a confidence level threshold for the candidate data variables, and finally execute the model.
Any data variable that does not meet the confidence level criteria, will be disqualified and excluded from the regression model going forward.
Once the regression model has been executed, the analyst will be able to clearly see which historical marketing tactics had the highest multiplier effect, what the calculated time-lag effect was between the marketing tactics being executed, and when that tactic materialized into, for example, sales.
But that is simply the starting point.
The regression model that was just created can now be used by both the business leader and the analyst to make one or multiple projections on the future performance of those marketing tactics that had the biggest impact on the priority.
The fifth and final step is for the business user to start using the regression model and to start making informed decisions about future marketing engagements.
In short, Proof BusinessGPS is an invaluable resource for business leaders who need to make informed decisions about marketing initiatives and the priorities these initiatives need to support