Who is the owner of this red-hot ride? If you guessed Software Engineer, you are correct!
Archive for year: 2018
Data, Analytics, and Insights: How are they connected?
Data and analytics build off of each other to deliver deep understanding, or insights, into your user base. Insights provide essential wisdom about your users and reveal actions you can take to better your business. However, these insights cannot be obtained without analytics, and analytics is useless without data.
Think of the three as a step by step:
- Collect data
- Apply analytics
- Interpret insights
Building off of the rock-solid foundation of your own data, you can use analytics and resulting insights to grow and develop your business.
The Inn Resorts have selected and are implementing TrackResults for its powerful sales activity tracking and analytical reporting. The Inn Resorts run one sales center and three check-in hotel properties all located in the beautiful “Golden Zone” in Mazatlán, Mexico. We are thrilled to have them on the team as they take on the expansion of the company’s vacation club led by recently appointed VP of Sales and Marketing, Juan Zamora.
TrackResults Co-Founder Todd Rodgers (seen below in the pink bow-tie) known for his love of Poker and Philanthropy, has been competing in the 2018 World Series of Poker this past week in Las Vegas, Nevada. With a current chip total of $183,000 he has been placed at a featured table for the 
rest of this evening. ESPN2 is covering the event and will be broadcasting until midnight ET tonight. Tune in and see Todd go up against the best in the world all while decked out in his signature TrackResults Poker Attire. I’m not a betting man but I’ll wager we don’t see anyone from Domo or Tableau at his table.
What is customized software?
Build vs. Buy? It’s the dilemma that just won’t die. Often the answer comes down to budget. Even when the more expensive option is best, the disparity in cost between purpose-built solutions and out-of-the-box tools can be insurmountable. Custom software is a type of application developed specifically to suit a particular business or an organization to fulfill its specific business-centric requirements. There are many benefits of designing and developing software exactly as per your requirements. Here is an article by Lisa Michaels on how custom-made software can benefit your business. It sheds light on the real cost of making the wrong decision when deciding on a software solution.
Software tools have advanced to the point that almost anyone can access Business Intelligence and perform at least basic analysis within their organization. Small and medium-sized businesses have access to data that just ten years ago was available only to the largest and most profitable companies. Now that BI is no longer a luxury only the richest can afford, companies are seeing varying results from their BI efforts. Why do some businesses seem to be getting more from their BI efforts than others? The reasons are as varied as the companies themselves.
Here are 2 ways your business can maximize the value of your BI.
Spread it across your whole team
This information shouldn’t be a secret shared only in the boardroom. One of the most powerful things about having well-analyzed data is that it allows managers to share the metrics that are important to their whole team. When you give an employee a clear benchmark they have a way better chance of improving and are able to focus on the exact area where improvement is needed. The value of the data you have is directly proportional to the number of people in your organization that understand it.
Automate
BI is only as good as the data behind it. Many businesses resort to manual processes to meet this need, manually extracting data into Excel and preparing it for reporting can be extremely time-consuming. This process not only wastes time, it leads to data errors. A company cannot have full faith and confidence in data that was gathered manually. You must automate your data collection wherever possible and normalize it within a data warehouse and through the use of an ETL tool, this will save time and reduce errors in your data.
Customer data is the core of your organization. It allows you to engage with customers and prospects to deliver exactly what they need. Customer data is only as valuable as it is accurate, so it’s crucial that you have confidence in the data that is influencing your decisions. By cleansing your data, you will see many benefits:
- Improved data quality – By cleaning your data, the problem of incorrect, tainted data is effectively removed. This will help create a more efficient prospect list which will dramatically boost your customer acquisition efforts.
- Increased productivity – By having a database that has been cleaned and properly maintained, management can maximize staff productivity and efficiency by quickly and confidently finding reliable records.
- Improved account management- Having a clean database gives you the power to more effectively analyze and manage your company’s spending and creates clear opportunities for upsells. Clean records display where funds are going and if there are any ways to cut costs.
At the end of the day confidence, or lack thereof is what really influences key decisions. The best way to create this confidence is to have a credible third party audit your data hygiene and help correct any areas that need improvement.
Sunset Group is a premier developer in the Cancun area began using TrackResults in February 2017. As a result of their successful use of TrackResults over the course of the year, Sunset is expanding their use of analytics to include “Pender Efficiency Analytics.” This addition allows them to explore further their Pending business, and how to convert those to valid sales on a more consistent and profitable basis.
Based in Carlsbad California, Infinitee is a growing travel club that was finding their old solution was too cumbersome and didn’t meet Infinitee’s industry-specific needs and security to allow outside marketing companies the correct levels of controlled access to book tours for sales presentations. Infinitee Travel went live on the software within 3 days of licensing and is converting data from their previous systems.