Modern companies collect substantial amounts of data. The data captured worldwide is expected to exceed 180 zettabytes by 2025, up from 64.2 zettabytes in 2020. This proliferation of data presents a massive opportunity for companies seeking to gain valuable insights into their customers and operations.

Yet, most businesses don't use data effectively, as up to 73% of all data goes unused. So, how can companies leverage the data they collect to boost profitability? In this article, we'll explore how businesses, particularly in the mid-market space, or those finding themselves "data rich, but insights poor," can gather and use data better and increase profit margins through advanced analytics.

Explore how leveraging advanced commercial analytics can dramatically enhance profit margins for companies growing through acquisitions. Our latest article dives into the pivotal role of unified data sources and system integration in streamlining operations and boosting profitability. Discover how tools like Revenue Growth Analytics reduce manual data processing and provide actionable insights that lead to more efficient decision-making and optimized business strategies. Read the complete insights to understand the transformative impact of these technologies, tools, and methods on acquisition-heavy companies.

Revology Analytics recently had the opportunity to collaborate with Sales & Marketing experts from the Alexander Group, a leading Revenue Growth Strategy consultancy, where we discussed the impact of AI on B2B Sales Teams.

It's easy for us to get caught in the hype surrounding the latest and greatest tech advancements. Currently, AI is at the forefront of this phenomenon (what Gartner calls "peak of inflated expectations"). While AI certainly holds transformative potential, companies must approach its adoption with a measured perspective, especially in the mid-market sector (think $100MM-$1B in revenues).

Discover how strategic discounting transforms customer engagement and drives profitability in this week's Revology Analytics Insights video. Learn to tailor discounts effectively, ensuring sales growth and customer loyalty without compromising your bottom line.

Discover the latest insights in our newest video: The State of Promotion Analytics & Optimization. A must-watch for this week!

AI and ML have been reshaping industries, and Sales and Marketing Executives stand at a pivotal crossroads as capabilities from leading tech platforms accelerate.

The key to a competitive edge and increased profitability is leveraging popular tech stacks like Microsoft and Google. However, navigating through an oversaturated market of ~ 10,000 "turnkey" software products for Sales & Marketing Enablement is daunting.

Enter In-Sourcing, the strategic approach that elevates your company's analytics maturity, using popular tools like Microsoft's Power Platform and Azure or Google Cloud AI. In-sourcing your Revenue Growth Analytics capabilities highlights the transformation from vendor-reliance to an empowered, insights-driven organization, offering a path for executives to transform their companies to truly data and insights-driven.

In our recent webinar titled "Supercharge Your Revenue Growth Strategy with Knowledge Graphs," we discussed how this unique commercial analytics approach makes understanding multi-dimensional business data more accessible and substantially faster, helping you make smarter decisions and drive Profitable Growth quicker.

Kickstart the New Year with a game-changing gift for your team!

Discover our specialized corporate training programs in Advanced Revenue Growth Analytics, designed to fill the practical skill gaps in Revenue Growth Analytics (RGA) that many companies face.

It's the perfect opportunity to empower your commercial and analytics/data science teams with hands-on, real-world skills that immediately impact your bottom line.

Revology Analytics had the opportunity to join 25 leading Revenue Growth Management executives in CPG and Manufacturing in St. Louis earlier this week. We discussed the state of Revenue Growth Analytics in the CPG industry and the significant opportunity to in-source and own many of the advanced analytics capabilities foundational to a successful RGM and Pricing strategy.

In many ways, the state of Revenue Growth Management and its associated analytics capabilities have not changed meaningfully in the last ten years for Consumer Goods companies. There's still a heavy reliance on data and information providers like Nielsen and IRI to carry out foundational Pricing & Promotional Analytics efforts, including Price Elasticity and Marketing Mix Modeling, or a heavy reliance on 3rd party software for price analytics, scenario analyses, and optimization efforts.

However, the world is changing....fast.

In this case study, we detail how a leading West Coast thrift retailer with $350M in revenue successfully optimized their promotional and marketing spend, a critical component constituting 20-30% of their gross revenues. Faced with the challenge of harnessing analytics to drive better returns from their marketing and promotional strategies, the retailer collaborated with Revology Analytics to augment their Promotions and Marketing Analytics. The focus was on overcoming the lack of foundational analytics for effective promotional and marketing investments and turning these areas into growth engines to meet their ambitious five-year plan. The case study showcases the transformative power of targeted analytics in reshaping promotion effectiveness and marketing optimization in the mid-market retail sector.

This case study explores how a prominent med-tech company revolutionized its margin management by developing an in-house Dynamic B2B Margin Analytics Platform. Faced with challenges such as limited visibility into pricing and margin drivers and inconsistent discounting practices, the company recognized the need for advanced pricing analytics capabilities. Partnering with Revology Analytics, they embarked on a strategic journey to enhance their pricing analytical acumen, aiming to improve net price realization and address revenue leakages. The case details the transformative impact of this initiative, demonstrating the effectiveness of co-creating an in-sourced solution with internal stakeholders, using an existing tech stack like Tableau for powerful visualization and scenario analysis capabilities.

In this case study, we delve into the strategic implementation of dynamic pricing by a Fortune 500 specialty retailer, aiming to enhance market share and profitability in their brick-and-mortar (B&M) channel. Despite the success of dynamic pricing in their e-commerce channel, the retailer faced unique challenges in translating this strategy to their physical stores, constituting 90% of their sales. The initiative encountered skepticism and logistical hurdles in frequently changing price tags. In partnership with Revology Analytics, the retailer overcame these challenges through a practical, simple-to-understand dynamic pricing solution, resulting in increased gross margins, fast and cost-effective implementation, and successful stakeholder engagement in their dynamic pricing journey.

In this case study, we examine the journey of a $5B North American consumer durables distributor as they tackled a critical challenge: how to drive profitability with $150 million in unproductive inventory. Struggling with aggressive buying patterns and a lack of efficient, automated discounting strategies, the company grappled with significant liquidity issues and operational inefficiencies. Partnering with Revology Analytics, they embarked on a transformative path towards a dynamic Markdown Pricing solution using the company's existing tech stack (Google Cloud Platform). Our study highlights the innovative strategies and analytical methods employed to optimize markdown pricing, demonstrating how the company improved inventory liquidity and gross profit and streamlined its sales and operational processes.

In this case study, we explore how a $1.5B privately-held Consumer Packaged Goods manufacturer successfully navigated the challenges of a competitive market. Facing declining market share and profitability, the company struggled with ineffective promotional strategies, leading to eroded gross margins in the face of increased promotional spending. The company collaborated with Revology Analytics to develop the Promotion Effectiveness and Optimization platform using the client's existing tech stack. This included the development of a Pricing & Promotions data warehouse in Azure and Diagnostic and Predictive Analytics capabilities for Pricing & Promotions using Tableau and R. The case study offers valuable insights into overcoming obstacles in planning and profitability, showcasing the significant improvements in retail buyer engagement, gross profit, promotional ROI, and market share.

Two decades later, Promotion Effectiveness & Optimization is still a substantial business problem for companies; at least 50% struggle in this arena.

When we asked ~ 150 commercial leaders about their organization's Promotion Effectiveness & Optimization capabilities, the Consumer Goods industry emerged with a high score of 3.3 (a little better than Average). This is unsurprising since this is one industry where Promotional spending is routinely 15-30% of Gross Revenues and where the Trade Promotion Management, Effectiveness & Optimization (TPX) software industry grew the fastest.

Missing in Action: Why almost 50% of companies neglect to monitor crucial profit drivers.

Understanding the key drivers of revenue and gross profit growth - price, cost, volume, and customer/product mix - is paramount for effective business strategy and financial management. However, our recent survey brings a concerning (but unsurprising) Revenue Growth Analytics gap.

While 52% of companies employ a rigorous method to monitor the financial impact of their pricing activities, cost changes, and volume and mix shifts, the rest seem to be missing out on the benefits of this comprehensive Growth Drivers Analysis, also known as Price-Cost-Volume-Mix (PCVM) analysis.

Why Price Realization Matters: Key Findings from our Inaugural Revenue Growth Analytics Survey.

A company's ability to consistently measure and manage its Net Price Realization is a crucial, yet often overlooked, element of a robust Profit Growth Strategy.

Price Realization - the difference between your List Price and Actual Price (after discounts, rebates, and other incentives/concessions) impacts your bottom line in a significant way.

Over 125 commercial leaders have taken our Revenue Growth Analytics Maturity Quiz, which measured maturity/competency scores across three major areas:

1) Margin Analytics & Optimization

2) Promotion Effectiveness & Optimization

3) Sales & Customer Growth Analytics

The first question in the "Margin Analytics & Optimization" section asked respondents, "How frequently is pricing performance (net price realization) measured and reported to company leaders?".

GPT-4 is already starting to reshape the field of commercial analytics, and we at Revology Analytics are huge proponents of it.

In our recent webinar titled "GPT-Powered Speed: Supercharging your Revenue Analytics," we delved deep into how GPT-4 is a game changer for analytics teams. More specifically, we explored GPT-4's ability to accelerate productivity around diagnostic and predictive analytics for Revenue growth problems.

In addition to exploring how to create the perfect prompts for analytical workstreams, we provided hands-on examples in Python using simulated data sets for things like Price Elasticity modeling, Cohort Analyses, and Churn Modeling.

We have the full recording available here for those who missed the live session or wished to revisit the insights.

This article was originally published in Authority Magazine’s “The CMO” newsletter.

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With the growing complexity of marketing channels and the need for businesses to constantly adapt their strategies, managing marketing budgets effectively has become more critical than ever. In this interview series, we speak with CMOs and other marketing leaders who have significant experience in budget management and optimization, to share their “5 Ways To Manage Your Marketing Budget For Improved ROI.” As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Armin Kakas.