You are planning to create and implement your own cloud-based data warehouse for marketing and sales data. In the technical background, industry standards such as SQL should be used. To ensure fast and cost-effective data acquisition, you want to use the service of specialized providers for API connectors. But before you make a final decision to implement such an infrastructure, you want to reassure yourself: is the effort really worth it? In this article, we report on the advantages of cloud-based data warehouses in the context of online marketing and our experience with it.
#1. Scalability
You can design and use cloud data warehouses as customized as you need it. You can extend and use it as you like: in principle, you can access any data format and any data source. This includes:
- online and offline sales data
- CRM data
- lead, sales and customer segments
- marketing data
- sales data
- market data, research and secondary data such as trends.
You can set up your own customer segments and clusters in order to address them in a targeted and automated manner via e-mails or mail items. In addition, monitoring and alert systems can be integrated, the triggers and actions of which you determine yourself.
#2. Up to Date, Less Error-Prone & Freely Extensible
As a rule, no more manual feeding of data is necessary, which minimizes sources of error when inserting, editing and analyzing. Only some data such as targets, budgets or comparisons still need to be entered manually. If the data sources are linked so that data is automatically fed into the data warehouse on a daily basis, the visualizations or data output stream is always up to date. Cloud-based systems can be scaled according to the storage space used and the load of users and queries. You no longer have to worry about hardware usage, storage space and software updates.
#3. More Control, Less Dependency
You can also reduce the number of different devices used in your organization, some of whose functions overlap, which can mean cost savings. It also means less dependence on device vendors. You own the data infrastructure and manage access to it yourself.
#4. Increase Understanding by Eliminating Data Silos
All the data flowing into the data warehouse can be accessed internally by any type of user using self-service dashboards, Excel plug-ins and query models such as SQL. This eliminates silos between departments. You can now get a comprehensive overview of the different departments and problems. This creates awareness of other departments and their work. Everyone can look at other departments and compare: how many customers have we acquired per department? How many clients have other departments acquired? Management also has a central insight: how does the performance of the departments affect the bottom line?
It’s not just online channels and platforms that can be linked, but also offline channels, market research data, advertising plans and calendars. This greatly improves the information situation for management and staff, ultimately leading to a better picture. From this data you can deduce and verify, for example: is an online shop more profitable than Amazon? What is the key composition of the consumer basket?
#5. More Space for Project Workers
More space for project staff. Dashboards and the data they display can be used by non-technical staff in all departments. Your staff can work more efficiently as data collection for reporting and analysis is simplified: self-service and 24/7 availability mean they no longer have to wait for someone else’s data, they can access it themselves. However, access to sensitive data can be restricted.
Put your staff in a position to deal with increasingly complex problems. This opens the door to new ideas, analyses, processes and improvement proposals, as departmental and company-wide barriers are now removed. It is also possible to hire data warehouse consultants to answer complex questions. They can find the data they need to do their job in a structured way and get to work straight away.
