In 2020, MicroStrategy’s Global State of Enterprise Analytics report outlined how 57% of organisations were leveraging data analytics to drive change and critical strategies. In fact, about 60% of companies were reported to be using data analytics to drive cost and process efficiency. These numbers would be even higher today.
While raw data has immense potential, data analytics is required to unlock the power of data to grow sales and overall business. Data analytics helps in delivering top-line and margin growth for sales organisations. It helps understand customers, personalise marketing campaigns, guide strategic decisions, and improve the business’s bottom line. But all these benefits can only be leveraged when the data analytics function is implemented well.
Challenges of Adopting Data Analytics for Indirect Sales Channels
Incorporating Complex Data into the Customer Journey
To gain productive insights from the data analytics function, the primary step is to understand the relationship between the data and the buying journey of customers. This becomes a challenge in the case of indirect sales channels because customers’ buying journey needs to be identified. The target audience also switches between multiple channels before converting into customers. In essence, the data analytics solution can be complicated due to inconsistent resources and unpredictable algorithms.
Favourably, an integrated solution can help reach comprehensive channels and deliver connected customer service experiences. It helps in gaining an in-depth understanding of the buying journey of customers. The solution also empowers sales teams by giving them time to nurture customer relationships.
Making Data Ready for Analysis
Various tools are used to analyse the massive volume of data in real time. While the entry barrier to data analysis might be low, it requires much effort and conceptualisation to make the function market-ready. Often, organisations relying on indirect sales channels find it difficult to adopt data analytics solutions due to multiple data sources. This is where the adoption of a specialised distributor solution proves viable.
The specialised distributor solution combines and cleans the critical data and aggregates it into an integrated model that supports multiple sources of data and business logic. It also helps optimise business workflows, streamline operations, and enhance data visibility across channels. The real-time data insights empower the distributors and help them make informed decisions.
Data Reporting Gaps
Even after all the data from indirect sales channels is combined, there can be significant gaps in the data reporting capabilities. Some reporting gaps include a need for attribution, incomplete customer records, and ineffective tracking of purchasing and marketing activities. With these gaps and challenges, it gets difficult to adopt data analytics solutions to predict the effectiveness of marketing strategies.
The distributor-level solution helps integrate all the data in a single warehouse and offers a complete spectrum of options like CRM, ERP, D-connect (mobile app), and powerful reporting tools – helping deliver exceptional customer service and streamlining the reporting function.
Trustworthiness of Your Data
Many businesses invest in data analytics to understand customers better, develop effective marketing strategies, and make informed decisions. But in the case of indirect sales channels, businesses often do not trust the data derived from data analytics solutions due to a lack of transparency in data sources and analysis. Therefore, they need a transparent data analytics management solution and governance capabilities to eliminate this trust gap.
An all-inclusive distributor solution can help businesses meet their data governance needs and get reliable data to manage operations smoothly and boost their business growth.
Data Privacy Concerns
Often, there’s news around personal and business information leaks. This makes customers more sensitive to data privacy and how their data is being used, and rightly so. Organisations, too, have to follow the evolving rules and regulations surrounding data privacy. Adopting a viable solution in such a landscape becomes challenging. Favourably, an integrated distributor solution can help organisations eradicate privacy challenges by monitoring and controlling access to content.
Also Read: 6 Things You Can Do to Empower Your Channel to Sell More
Lack of Financial Resources
The implementation of the data analytics function often entails substantial monetary investments. Businesses need to look at various factors, including data storage costs, processing, infrastructure, and human resources. While the core data analytics solution may be very costly for indirect sales channels, an all-inclusive distributor solution handles all aspects of sales, marketing, data management, and reporting.
How iSteer Insight Can Help You Adopt Data Analytics Successfully
The fierce competition in the market has increased the importance of data analytics for businesses. From designing strategies based on reliable data to measuring performance precisely, data analytics has changed both offline and online marketing and sales to a great extent. But considering the challenges for organisations selling through indirect sales channels, a tailored distributor solution proves beneficial. It can enhance a business’s ability to derive real-time insights from data and make sales and marketing strategies more successful.
iSteer Insight makes integrating and analysing data from multiple data sources easier and delivers best-in-class service to customers across industries. More profoundly, it helps businesses:
- Measure performance against business goals
- Identify new opportunities from customer insights
- Facilitate fast and accurate reporting
- Perform competitive analysis
- Make improved and accurate decisions
Contact us to learn more.
