Contributed by Gert Laursen--author, head of customer intelligence at Maersk Line, and business intelligence thought leader in Denmark

Dear reader,

In my new book, Business Analytics for Sales and Marketing Managers: How to Compete in the Information Age, you can learn how you can use analytics to reach your sales and marketing objectives. As with my previous book, Business Analytics for Managers: Taking Business Intelligence Beyond Reporting, co-written with Jesper Thorlund, this book is based on a pragmatic “top-down” approach that gives you concrete input on what data to use, which algorithm to select, and how to implement the results. So if you are a sales and marketing manager —or share objectives with one— this book should be of interest to you.

More specifically, the content of the book is structured like a large decision tree, which first helps you identify how you should increase the value of your customer base. You can do this through four ways:

1. Optimizing your acquisition processes

2. Optimizing the ways you sell to your existing customer base

3. Optimizing your retention processes

4. Prioritizing which customers to focus on

The big question is, of course, on which of the four ways should you focus? This book can give you guidance via a questionnaire that will help you identify what is most relevant according to your strategy or competitive situation. You can also read how you can pick the right value discipline based on data analysis, should you still be drawing a blank on what to do. I provide a generic CRM plan that can serve as a starting point.

After you have defined which of the four focus areas that you want to begin with, you can then find a dedicated chapter on the subject. The book will help you identify which section within the chapter to read, for example, data warehouse information, questionnaire information, or the tacit knowledge of experts.

Each section will then present what data you should use or generate, how to analyze it, how to implement the solution, how to measure the progress, and how to take that natural next step and enhance your project plan.

To read a free sample chapter from this book or to learn more about Gert Laursen, visit his author page.