Partner Article

Is big data the key to customer retention?

The explosion of interest in big data in the last year has created a new focus for businesses of all kinds. The quality and quantity of analytics tools is increasing, as is the demand from the boardroom for business decisions based on quality, timely data.

We are now seeing the marrying of science and business, creating new opportunities in sectors across technology and IT.

From a new sale and throughout the customer lifecycle, a vast amount of data is captured about customers, partners and products. An existing customer is therefore a mine of information that represents a massive opportunity for analysing new opportunities, based on pure data and hard facts.

The UK in particular has seen the effects of the global recession hitting new business hard, simply it is harder than ever to win new customers. The combination of access to data, alongside this new business challenge is leading to a focus on retaining and growing customers rather than expending expensive energies on clawing new customers.

Business models from tech leaders such as Intel and VMware have seen tangible shifts this year based on these new methods of data analysis alongside new business challenges.

This data analytics shift marries to the business of ‘renew’ in a way that is unachievable for new business.

A focus on strengthening customer intimacy and success is now driving renewed business, with cross-sell and up-sell opportunities being more readily identified through the use of big data and in turn making existing customers the lifeblood of a successful business.

An example of this change to a ‘renew’ culture can be seen in the boom of the subscription model – for example the consumer trend for ‘on-demand’ services such as Netflix and Spotify.

SaaS businesses are leading the way in this sphere. As there is less money in the pot for in-house built software solutions, customers are looking for instant results, through easy to access services which they can pick up and use when needed, quickly being able to judge its usefulness.

For suppliers of SaaS services, a large amount of data can be collected about these customers - how they use a service, what features they are and are not accessing, creating up and cross-sale opportunities like never before.

For customers subscription models such as this can also mean a more tailored service, without the added infrastructure costs associated with an in-house solution.

Customer-use data can also be the solution to customers leaving. And, if you know why customers leave, you have a better view of how to retain them.

As a business that survives on making this data easy to access, ServiceSource has seen a trend in data-on–demand, with businesses looking to invest in data analytics to drive business growth now.

2013 is the year of economic shift from new to renew. Instant on-demand is the new hot product and successful models are dependent on data-centric decision making.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Martin Moran, SVP and General Manager, EMEA, ServiceSource .