The difference between Business Intelligence and Analytics

The difference between Business Intelligence and Analytics

Big Ideas

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October 25 2017
Big Ideas

Sherpa has always been an early adopter when it comes to marketing technology. We incorporated digital marketing into our service offering in 1998.

We sought to differentiate ourselves by embracing technology that allowed us to help find ways to market better and to build measurability into our marketing efforts.

Analyzing Data

Whether it was using available tools (remember Fox Pro?) to create and analyze transactional databases or website analytics using WebTrends, we sought to find out how to deliver the right message at the right time to the right person – and then reviewed available data to see if our tactics worked.

Believe it or not, our purpose changed very little. Sherpa still seeks to find the truth in the data.

What has changed are the number of channels, the sophistication of what is tracked and how we can correlate, integrate and analyze data.

Many marketing firms will use the term “analytics” as their catch-all for the process of capturing and reviewing data from different channels.

Until recently, we would admit that Sherpa was guilty of using the same phrase as a blanket to cover all the hard work that we do building measurability into our campaigns.

About two years ago, we had the eureka moment that lead us to today. That moment was the realization that we weren’t being purposeful in describing our process and the output very well.

Business Intelligence 

Basic analytics are what we would call “surface level metrics”. How many times have you been delivered a basic Google Analytics report? How many times have you received a report of how many Twitter followers and likes you got? Did you feel like there should have been more?

While core to the process, surface level metrics represent the tip of the iceberg. These metrics should inform a deeper dive. Which metrics matter is dynamic and differs by business and business objectives.

The last two steps are the most important, Insights and Recommendations.

The Business Intelligence Department 

We believe that the Sherpa difference is what we call Business Intelligence. It’s our commitment to looking at connections between channels and the desire to identify and understand purchase intent behaviour. It’s our commitment to making sure that we are helping our clients be present in the “moment”.

Software alone is not enough; you need smart human beings with experience wielding the right tools. To that end, Sherpa built a BI department with a full-time group dedicated to the execution of all four steps. They are skilled digital marketers, data analysts and programmers that have a keen ability to uncover what matters in the available data.

Whether it’s Tableau, CallRail, ScreamingFrog or Google Analytics, we have about a dozen tools that we employ to help reveal what’s working (and what isn’t). And the BI team is always evaluating the best new tools and platforms to help drive actionable Business Intelligence.

The purpose of marketing is to persuade or convince consumers that you are the best option for their dollars and loyalty.

To see an example of a deep dive on an awareness campaign that the BI team executed, view Barkman's white paper.

Sherpa is committed to finding the nuggets of information in the reams of data that your channels throw off. Our purpose-built BI team is ready to start mining for you today.

 

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