What can We do to make You Care?: The Power of Web Analytics

The Internet had become an important tool for companies, organizations and even for small time businessmen. It became a primary instrument for marketing, advertising and transaction of one’s products. It helped a lot of businessmen in promoting and introducing their products not only in one place but in various regions around the world. But, there is more to the use of internet other than making a product look or taste good it can be also use to track the marketing behavior of consumers, gather data of competitors and even update you to upcoming future dilemmas. That is why the web is considered a very vital utensil in achieving competitive advantage.

However, having an internet site with all your products in is not the most important case we must take in consideration. What we need to understand is that your internet site is more than a web page, in it there are various data encrypted that may give its owner a surreal blur like of feeling when we see it or even try to interpret it, but those hidden data may be the answer to our competitive advantage. So how do we interpret these bundles of random information? By using Web Analytics of course!

Web Analytics is the extensive study, continuous collection, interpretation and reporting of various internet data to maximize web usage. This includes websites potential and opportunities, visibility to prospected demographics and their feedbacks, as well as website performance.

During our class in data mining under Mr. Ramon Duremdes Jr. my fellow colleagues (Danielle Benig, Camille Caleon, Jerika Hemedez and Julie Nolasco) learned that Web analytics works like this:

First, when you visited a website you will abscond with significant amount of data depending on what data collection tool that site has and it will report it back in the form of data tables, graphs or text. Web Logs for example captures almost every bit of data the user leaves behind while Web beacons only get what the website owner wants it to get.

These tools are so useful at the same time effective and efficient because manual collection of data from the net may take months to interpret and report so some of them do not come in cheap prices. But some Web Analytics tools are free like Google Analytics. Our class may never understood its full potential but according to our given reports yesterday about Business Intelligence and Web Analytics it concludes that Google Analytics can be useful in Harnessing data not only for companies but also for students who are just starting to grasp the true essence and power of Web Analytics.

According to Avinash Kaushik’s Book Web Analytics: An Hour a Day, critical components of a successful web analytics consist of the following elements:

FOCUS ON CUSTOMER CENTRICITY

As I had said earlier an internet website is not only there for viewing and marketing purpose only. It will only serve its true purpose if it had change something in your company. If the customer had made a transaction, commented on your website or even suggested on it they you can say that your web had served you well because with those kind of actions you will not only process quantitative data you will also extract qualitative data from your customers and these data are nothing and useless without the other. Given quantitative data you can learn some of the market trends that are growing in the present time and with qualitative data you will know WHY these trends are showing up. In return you can improve on your products and in your website itself for the benefit of the consumers.

SOLVE FOR BUSINESS QUESTIONS

Stand out from your competitors. You may have the same genre of business but competitive advantage develops through the business questions you develop and answer.

If you are able to carry out more customer value compared to the neighboring company even if you have the same line of business you will be sue in standing out. So try to ask questions in your company: How can we serve our consumers better? What can we do to improve our service? How can we increase profit without sacrificing the benefits our consumers? Answering these questions with the use of your collected data will ensure you a better service to your consumers and better performance to your company.

FOLLOW THE 10/90 RULE

Spend ten percent of your allotted budget to your tools and ninety percent on your people. People are the most important asset of the company not the tools. The tools may offer a little helping hand but it is the people who are responsible of taking your company to great heights. Taking care of your most important asset will most likely yield better performance in work as well as earning their loyalty. Successful Web Analysis do not come from tools, they come from the people who uses those tools.

Hire great analysts. People who are:

· Have used more than one web analytics tool extensively

· Before doing any important analysis, visit the website and look at the web pages

· Their core approach is customer centric

· Know the different gathering tools, their uses and applicability

· Are comfortable in the quantitative and qualitative worlds

· Are avid explorers

· Are effective communicators

· Are street smart

· Play offense and not just defense

And last but the not the least…..

IDENTIFY OPTIMAL ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Before anything else people in your company must know their roles and responsibilities to avoid clashes and conflict with work. Having the best organizational structure would not only avoid conflicts but also ensure proper workflow on the company. When using teams or groups for research or projects be sure that each members is cool with the other. Choosing the right combination of people will result to better performance.

In our research on SMART’s company background we have found out the it followed almost all of the rules the Kaushik mentioned in his book. Not do they only focuse their service on thir customers they have an effective organizational structure, and have a set of employees that are dedicated to their jobs and through that SMART do not only have a great sense of BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE but also a COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE over its competitors.

Reputation: The World’s Window on Your Status

What is Reputation?

What is Reputation? “Reputation is the opinion (more technically, a social evaluation) of the public toward a person, a group of people, or an organization. It is an important factor in many fields, such as education, business, online communities or social status. Reputation can be considered as a component of the identity as defined by others.”

Why build up your reputation?

As an individual we want to have a good reputation because these merits exclude us from extensive inspection from others as well as bad publicity. Since the dawn of civilization people are trying to build up their reputation for a lot of reasons.
First, it builds up your credibility, it helps you build trust and credibility with other people; it can help a merchant or businessman persuade someone to buy from you if they are not sure and it is also far easier to raise your prices if people perceive you as an expert. Second, reputation can take you anywhere; politicians with good reputations almost always win a sit in their intended positions and win the heart of its voters. Companies with good reputation also have an advantage over its competitors because they can get the trust of their customers for as long as they can assure the quality of their product.

Third, reputation can alter everything. It is true that reputation is the window of the world to your status so you must take care of it. “It takes twenty years to build a good reputation and only five minutes to easily ruin it. A good example of this in the telecommunications industry, Big companies like Globe, Smart and Sun took years of good reputation management to keep them in their game but it only takes one bad rumour to spill a stain in their good reputation.
Reputation is a factor worthy of being monitored and taken care of because it a major factor that will take a person, group of people, a company or an organization a step closer to their goals.




How to monitor your reputation?
Before the birth of the internet reputation is only small and difficult to trace, since there is no means of sharing on line before reputation revolves around the word of mouth and years of dedication of building one though publicity. But with the birth of the internet information transfer from one are to another in a snap became possible and so does the scope of on line reputation.
From that day reputation of a person or a company takes on a bigger area because it is not only concentrated on one place, their reputation can go all over the world because of the vulnerability of their data in the internet.
Yes, their good reputation can go all over the world in just a few clicks of the button but also their bad reputations or some fancy rumours about people and their company. So people and companies must device a way in monitoring their own reputations and take actions immediately to stop the bad publicity ruining the company’s impression.

But there is good news, monitoring tools are available and attainable to help an individual or a company keep an eye on their publicity issues. These tools can help people and companies detect the problems and look for a possible solution before the problems develop into bigger liabilities. Not only can monitoring tools give you a clairvoyant eye on your publicity problems but it can also detect how your customers, competitors and stakeholders feels about your company.

According to the book of Radically Transparent by Andy Beal and Dr. Judy Strauss, there are three essential monitoring tools that you can use in keeping a close eye on your reputation.

1. Really Simple Syndication (RSS):
Stated from www. Wikipedia .com: RSS (most commonly translated as "Really Simple Syndication" but sometimes "Rich Site Summary") is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format. An RSS document (which is called a "feed", "web feed" or "channel") includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship. Web feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content automatically. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place. RSS feeds can be read using software called an "RSS reader", "feed reader", or "aggregator", which can be web-based, desktop-based, or mobile-device-based.




2. Tracking software: tracking software is used to track the most hidden web content and will notify the user as soon as the changes occur. This incurs a cost to the user but is it worth it especially for big companies that are having a hard time monitoring their valuable reputation.

3. Email Updates: this is the simplest form of updating you with the changes in online activity and it is easy to use. Just subscribe to Google Alerts and type in the phrases you want to update on the program will instantly alert you via email to the latest updates related to the words you had type into. This is compatible to small scale business or individual people because it is free but at the cost of causing a flood on their inboxes.

A leading problem in the telecommunication industry in the Philippines is the issue with the unwanted extra charges being placed in customers load. This issue not only appeared in the newspapers but also in news on line and in blogs of other people. Through on line monitoring telecommunication companies such as Smart can take action quickly by removing the problems associated with the issue.

Lastly, you must have someone to monitor your company, Monitoring tools are useless without someone to monitor and sort out data so it is advisable to hire someone who can do these things for the company. It is also less advisable to out source because in house employees are more dedicated than out source employees and knows the company better.

For us students I think we can benefit from these monitoring tools like Google alert, ACS's Serph and Boardtracker.com if we start the research on our chosen company and our main competitors. I hope Mr. Ramon Duremdes can give us more knowledge in using the other tools stated above so we can perform at our best.
For references and other opinion about my blog please consult the blogs of Danielle Benig, Camille Caleon, Julie Nolasco and Ikah Hemedez.

THE JEWELS OF DATA MINING

Mining for jewels is not an easy task, you need all the useful information you can get to harbour precious stones such as rubies, sapphires and emeralds. But it is not an easy task, usually in mines not all rocks contain elegant stones so the information you have in hand must be accurate to get to your goal and successfully get what you want.

Data Mining is also similar to Geographic Mining, according to the introduction to Data Mining by Kurt Thearling: “Data Mining is the extraction of hidden predictive information from large databases”. It is a powerful technology that is developed through the years of data collection and is used to harvest the most important information hidden or stocked in data warehouses. It is considered so powerful because according to the article it cannot only solve business problems but predict the future trends of your businesses so you can come out with a plan before the problem even starts.

To operate such complicated software Data Mining needs three basic foundations. First, it needs a memory that can handle various amounts of data because of the existing amount of information today. Second, it needs multiprocessor computers which can analyze data in shorter time to gather data faster. And third, it needs Data mining algorithms which serve as the protocol in managing information. With these foundations Data mining is considered stable.

So what are the advantages of data mining?

Given its big memory size and quality of its service Data Mining can provide Capabilities like Automated prediction of trends and behaviour and discovery of unknown existing patterns.
Because it can forecast in to the future trend or demand the user of Data Mining can have a competitive advantage over its competitors because they have a step forward against them. And since it can see through the unusual patterns in demands the company can see the anomalous data in the data warehouse and they can fix it before it can cause trouble to the data reservoir.

Data Mining is also a great aid to Database Systems and Data Warehouses because it had made getting the data you want easier. The book “MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYTEMS BY HAAG” defines Database as a collection of information that you can organize access according to the logical structure of the information. Data mining tools such as Query and Reporting tools, Intelligent Agents, Multi dimensional Analysis and Statistical Tools are used to query information in a Data Warehouse. Here is the Information about the following Data Mining Tools:

· Query and Reporting Tools: Similar to QBE tools, SQL, and report generators in the typical database environment.

· Intelligent Agents: Utilize various artificial intelligence tools such as neural networks and fuzzy logic to form the basis of “information discovery” and building business intelligence in OLAP.

· Multidimensional Analysis: Slice and Dice techniques that allow you to view multidimensional information from different perspectives.

· Statistical Tools: Help you apply various mathematical models to the information stored in data warehouse to discover new information.



As I go down to this part I realize that Data Warehouses and Data Mining are related to business intelligence and gaining competitive advantage. Due to the information extracted from your data warehouse you can get knowledge about customers, competitor’s partners, suppliers, the competitive environment and your internal operations. These factors can help a company build effective and important business decisions. It can be also be combined to one’s advertising strategy, information on customer demographics and can identify possible target markets.

Now that you can see that Data Mining, Data Warehouses and Business intelligence work hand in hand to produce a significant data and helps company build better strategy as well as competitive advantages over their competitors.

Relating to Telecommunications Data Warehouse, Data Mining and Business Intelligence can be helpful in their strategies. For example, Smart Telecommunication needs to successfully identify its target market and aligned its advertising strategy to that market. With the existence of data warehouse SMART’s marketing team can trace out the biggest market shares of cell phone users based on the latest trends, with that smart can point out to which customer they will advertise their commercial advertisements. Another application of data mining is that it can trace which post paid users are willing to have a second post-paid account. Not only it saves money in advertisements it also gives very useful information with just a touch of the user’s finger. It is very convenient and at the same time efficient.


In Conclusion, INFORMATION is very valuable to a company so they need the proper data mining tools in order to get the proper information that is hidden under the bedrock of data.

With the help of Kurt Threaling’s site and our reference book in Data mining I was able to come up with this blog. But I find it hard to read Kurt Threalings’s Post because most of the terms in the overview are too long and full of information. I think it would be best if the writer chops down the chunks of information posted on the readings so that the readers can easily digest all the complicated terms. And I hope that in our Datamin class Mr. Ramon Duremdes can give us a more detailed idea about the
subject matter for the benefit of the whole class.

For more information about Data Mining please see the blogs of my fellow colleagues: Danielle Benig, Camille Caleon, Jerika Hemedez and Julie Nolasco.

The Supportive Role of Information Technology and Business Intelligence in Telecommunications.

With the first development of Information Technology it had helped a lot of businesses in the world to prosper and develop along side with the ever changing need of consumers. Not only that Information Technology made business processes faster it had also brought a lot of advantages on every business it had catered.

The most recognizable effect of IT to businesses is through globalization. It did not only make the rest of the world reachable but it had also allowed the company to become interdependent. Second, IT had reduced the cost of every business process, Information technology has helped to computerize the business process thus streamlining businesses to make them extremely cost effective money making machines. Thus it had helped companies decrease cost and increase revenues. And third, it had cut a lot of operational time in every business it means that if a company takes a month to make a forecast before, now they can make forecasts as fast as a week. With this they can do more things in a given time.


In the Telecommunications industry Information Technology had became helpful in making these companies more attractive to the eye of the consumer. As explained by one of the porter’s five forces of competition the Telecommunications industry can tell whether what to do with a certain operation (e.g. expanding, research and development etc.). The buying power can tell a lot of how much can consumers spends for a certain service for example calling or making a text. With the help on information technology companies can actually record the call or text durations of each customers so they can see estimate a proper call and text rate for their services.

Information Technology is also accommodating in making Value Chain Analysis in the company. How is this possible? Information Technology acts as a reservoir of processed data which records all of the existing trends post by the consumers, when these trends are interpreted by companies like GLOBE, SMART and SUN cellular, they can respond to these trends by adding value to the services they offered that is related to the needs of consumers. A good example of this is the when SUN cellular introduced the unlimited call and text. Not only it answers the need of cheap telecommunication service, it gave Sun cellular a major competitive advantage over Globe and Smart Company. I.T. had identified the need of the consumers and Sun cellular succeeded in putting it into their value chain thanks to it. Value Chain and I.T. not only identifies the need of customers it also helps the company gain an advantage over the other by being the first one or respond to the change of wants and needs of the consumers.

It also helps in maintaining Customer Relationship Management. Since it keeps tract of the customers’ needs wants and behaviour the customer relationship management of a company can treat its customers better, understand their needs and wants, tailor offer response, and devise more effective market campaigns and better customer support systems. An example of better customer management is when customers have some inquiries about a telecommunication service. In companies such as PLDT, Globe, Smart and Sun they have customer hotline where you can ask about your network coverage, billing statements or other inquiries, the tellers of these companies can actually look for an answer by accessing their information guide a giving the appropriate solutions. In this method more consumers will be loyal to the network they are in to and will prevent them from changing networks.584

Another element of competitive advantage is Business Intelligence. The site www.CIO.com defines Business Intelligence as “an umbrella term that refers to a variety of software applications used to analyze an organization’s raw data. BI as a discipline is made up of several related activities, including data mining, online analytical processing, querying and reporting. Companies use BI to improve decision making, cut costs and identify new business opportunities. BI is more than just corporate reporting and more than a set of tools to coax data out of enterprise systems. CIOs use BI to identify inefficient business processes that are ripe for re-engineering.”

To gain better competitive advantages from consumer business intelligence ought to know its customers better and brings out the most optimal decision for its company. Business intelligence not only gives access to information but it also gives the right information for a certain decision and in turn it gives the appropriate solutions.

In conclusion, not only guts feeling of guess- estimates are the foundation of company methods such as business intelligence, CRM’s and Information technology are now present to give us a better understanding of how the market behaviour moves. And in turn it gives us a grasp on holding to better decisions than other companies. And with this competitive advantages develop on every company which uses the methods mentioned above.

And with this, I end the topic about I.T. and competitive advantage. Reading those articles make me feel more informed about the relationship between competitive advantages, business intelligence and Information Technology. The advantages of these readings is that they give you new insights about these business methods and how you can apply this to your future needs and the disadvantages is that as a student I do not understand some of the too technical terms mentioned in the articles compare to the book.

To better understand the topic please refer to the post of my colleagues Danielle Benig, Camille Caleon, Jerika Hemedez and Julie Nolasco. This blog is for the benefit our Data Mining Class under Mr. Ramon Duremdes Jr.

Prolouge: Where the story starts...

Every person no matter who he may be has a story to tell and has a humble beginning.

My full name is Charles Edward Joseph C. Tugade. I was born on the ninth of March year nineteen eighty nine at perpetual succor in Sampaloc, Manila. As a Child, I was like any other kid who is well loved by his family members.

I grew up to be an achiever and an academically inclined student. In kinder garden, I was always at the top of every subject that we had and was always the representative in every school occasion. Back then it feels so good when you receive good merits from your teachers because you feel that you are always at the top of your game.

Problems started when I entered elementary school at Don Bosco Technical Institute in Makati, at first I was overwhelmed with the sheer number of students. Shyness started to develop as a part of my personality and interacting with other students seems to be hard. Luckily some of my classmates became my friends for as long as I remember. Bullies also became a part of my everyday life in school as higher level students tend to push around the lower level students, but the good thing is that there are teachers and discipline officers that roam around the campus so bullying activities are controlled. In this period of life studies became a boring part of my life and instead of being the top student of my class I was only a part of our top ten. Having a lot of friends and extra curricular activities prevent me from accomplishing what my parents want: to be the best student in class.

After three years in Don Bosco, I have to move to a new school because our family is moving from Manila to Santa Rosa Laguna so I have to leave my friends behind and face a new crowd and new environment in my new school. I was enrolled at Laguna Bel Air School; we were one of the lucky enrollees who had availed the scholarship program of the subdivision. I worked hard to maintain my grade especially on hard to digest subjects like math. At high school I regain my study habit abilities when biology triggered it. Because I like biology so much I started to like studying again. Other subjects like physics and chemistry also became easy to understand.

When college came problems sprouted again. Because I do not like the course that my parents wanted for me I started to rebel against them and my studies. I started to drink alcohol almost every week and stopped participating in every subject that I am enrolled to. In the first term in De La Salle Canlubang I almost fail Algebra and English Basic because I dislike the school, the surroundings and everything in it. When I got my first set of course cards I realized that if I am going to keep this kind of attitude is it not my parents who will suffer but me and my future. So at the start of the second term I strived to get back on tract by studying with all my might and trying my best in every subject. In the third term of my first year I ended up being a dean’s lister and since then I have been acing in every subject that we had from quantitative techniques to operation research.
In the current term I am enrolled in Data Mining Class under Professor Ramon Duremdes, I am not sure what data mining is all about until our professor had his first lecture last Saturday. I learned that Data Mining is about data gathering and refining the data gathered so it can be useful information to a company. So far data mining is used to make better decisions and to granulized data to extend the detail of information to the sectors of a company or an organization, with data mining organizations can come up with better solution and decisions to a particular problem because of the sufficient amount of information thrown at them. I hope to learn more about this subject and if the situation permits I will have a good grade at the end of the term.