business intelligence for the postal operator
DESCRIPTION
TRANSCRIPT
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Developing Business
Intelligence Capabilities
In The Postal Organisation
Bernard Markowicz, Ph.D.March 2011
The Changing Business Environment
● Decline of reserved product volumes and revenues (-4%/year
for First Class in the U.S. (1))
● Growth of packages (+3%/year in the U.S.)
● Greater elasticity of competitive products (in average(2))
● Increased competition and integration between marketing
channels (direct mail, email, broadcast, etc.)
● business intelligence is needed to support products and
services decisions
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(1) BCG Study for USPS (2) Alan Robinson Study for Pitney Bowes – 2007-01
Business Intelligence Investigation
● In the fall of 2010, d/ap was tasked with evaluating
business intelligence capabilities at USPS
3
• P&G • Toyota of North America
• Pitney Bowes• Xerox
• Quad/Graphics
• Gannett • Disney
• AT&T • Verizon• ADS - Epsilon
• TJX - Chadwick – Zayre – HomeGoods
• Best - BuyUSPS Interviews
Canada Post
Secondary
Industry Best
Practices
Business Intelligence
• Customer segmentation (Attributes, needs, etc.)
• Criticality of needs
• Share of wallet
Customer Intelligence
• Market characteristics
• Market trends
• Players, value chains, participants, shares. etc.
Market Intelligence
• State of competition by segment
• Basis of competition (production, distribution, products)
• Dependence on key product attributes
Competitive Intelligence
4
Threshold Needs
(e.g., On-time Delivery)
Performance Needs (e.g., Price)
Outstanding
Poor
Poor ExcellentPerformance Relative to Competitors
Cu
sto
mer
Sati
sfa
cti
on
an
d L
oyalt
y
Excitement Attributes
(e.g., flat-rate boxes?)
Three Categories of Customer Needs
5
The Business Intelligence Process
6
Collect & Compile
Sift, Sort, & Verify
• Customer
Surveys
• Market
Research
• Experts
• Events,
Pubs
• Database
/Systems
• Data
cleansing
• Reduce
size of
data
• Needs vs
behaviors
• Mini DW
Analyze Interpret
• Analytics
• Integrate
internal/
external
• Score
cards
• SWOT
• Trends
• Identify
gaps &
opportuni-
ties
• Predictive
analysis
Organize Present
• Dashbrd
• Roadmap
• Segments
• Focus on
results
• Support
decision
making
• Communi
cation
playbooks
Analyze
Search
Index
Filter
The Business Intelligence Process
7
conversion of information to insight
Key Intelligence Topics
Collect & Compile
Sift, Sort, & Verify
Analyze Interpret Organize Present
Key Postal Intelligence Topics
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Business Intelligence Instruments
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• Household Diary Study (USPS)
• Media panels
• Focus Groups
• Satisfaction Surveys
• Direct mail response tests
• Industry Assessments
(Analyst reports, Press, Events)
• Retail data mining
• Acceptance units data mining
• Satisfaction Surveys
• Focus groups
senders receivers
Organisation of Business Intelligence
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Domestic Int’l
Finance Ops
DECENTRALISED
Int’l
Finance Ops
B/IDomestic
CENTRALISED
• Better data integration value
• Analyst cross-training
• Help build “Intelligence
consensus” across enterprise
• Immediate and direct access
• Facts closer to decisions
• Low value data marts
• Idea silos
Moving Forward
● Business intelligence is now a requirement for postal
operators
● Identify key intelligence topic and develop briefs
● Establish an “intelligence” consensus - Look for early wins
● Gradually bring together resources in a centralised unit
● Learn to develop insights from, and beyond information
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Accepted Encouraged Required