How can you excel at data analytics with CRMA?

As you consider what you have learned so far in this chapter, it is time to reflect on the state of data and analytics in your organization. Your data is an extremely valuable resource, one that should empower smart decision-making and guide organizational strategy. What value does your company data provide?

Ask yourself these questions and evaluate if your organization has any room for improvement:

• Do your leaders have accurate, current information at their fingertips to make informed decisions?
• Do you have one reliable source of information that you and your colleagues can access and depend upon? Or is information spread across multiple systems and platforms, and analyzed using a variety of tools?
• Is your team empowered and enabled by simple, actionable data analytics?
• Do you and your colleagues find yourselves gathering information from various places – such as cloud storage, CRM, spreadsheets, email, ERP, and so on – to bring it together in a spreadsheet and create the report you need to do your job?
• How do you share valuable insights and then action those insights? Is this simple and easy, or complex and difficult?
• What are your current strengths in the areas of data and analytics?
• What are your current weaknesses in the areas of data and analytics?
• What are your current opportunities in the areas of data and analytics?
• What are your current challenges in the areas of data and analytics?
• If platforms, people, and processes were not a barrier, where do you see your organization being in 12 months, in the context of using information to create actionable business insights? How likely is it that you will reach that ideal state?

I think I could summarize all of this into one simple question:

Does your organization excel at data analytics?

Honestly, in my experience across many industries and segments, most organizations do not excel. Many would not even be given a passing grade! Data analytics is a serious pain point for a typical business, whatever the size or vertical, and it is never solved by throwing money at it.

The good news is that CRMA is a powerful, comprehensive tool that can help your organization gain tremendous value from its information. How, exactly? Here are a few examples of what CRMA can do; think through these and see which ones most align with your goals and needs:

• Combine Salesforce and external data to create one trustworthy source of truth.
• Embed insights into the business process in Salesforce, empowering users to make faster, better decisions.
• Replace multiple, disconnected Salesforce reports with one cohesive and dynamic dashboard.
• Minimize or eliminate the ability to export reports from Salesforce into a tool such as Excel for aggregation, transformation, and visualization.
• Greatly simplify cross-object reporting.
• Inject real intelligence into the mix by way of the Einstein platform.
• Deliver great mobile analytics via the CRMA mobile app for iOS and Android.
• Outperform Salesforce Reports and Dashboards for large datasets.
• Enable the user to go from insight to action in just a few clicks, all on-platform and without leaving the CRMA dashboard.
• Model complex processes, combine multiple datasets, and incorporate complicated logic to create one comprehensive data source that drives real insight.

As we now move into the main content of this book, join me as we learn how CRMA can help transform your organization with the power of actionable business insights!