For those of us just trying to break into the music industry in this late hour in its history, we often find ourselves sitting at desks as unpaid interns. As sites like Youtube and Myspace have contributed new data to the ever-increasing pile of data gathered by the music industry, us interns are charged with collecting and sorting vast mountains of information. However, it’s the higher-ups who have the even tougher job of making sense of it all. That’s why the music industry is increasingly seeking out software solutions to help them sort out the difficult and complex fusion of analog and digital sales that constitute the music industry’s ever-changing profit model. In fact, in today’s data-driven online economy, most American businesses are trending towards updating their business intelligence software tools. Specifically, companies are looking to analyze critical data collected in their e-commerce and marketing divisions by utilizing new advances in business intelligence software.
Business intelligence software is being employed in a number of interesting applications, primarily to connect multiple, dissimilar data sources and quickly define the relationships between data sets, no matter how convoluted they are. In previous iterations, most business intelligence software was used to gather up mountains of data that needed to be sorted through and evaluated before they could be useful. From sales to marketing to supply chain, the software that is processing this data is now more capable than ever of offering automatic insights. In particular, software’s abilities include the ability to hone in n specific data via a familiar and user-friendly interface, and select data in a narrative style. That narrative aspect is particularly useful to those of us in the music industry, as our main product is no longer selling CD’s, but selling the personal relationship fans have with the artist.
That means making web infrastructure that doesn’t waste the users’ time. Luckily, business intelligence software can help out with that too, by presenting meta data the way you want it to be displayed and described, and by generating reports that can be delivered to multiple individuals in a variety of ways, including via email, a URL, or direct to a printer.
For those in the .com world, those kind of service-based technologies don’t even represent the tip of the iceberg. Now that social media has prompted another .com bubble, investors and entrepreneurs are turning their eye towards any analytics systems that can help make sense of this vast and confusing new data set. According to N. Veeraraghavan, senior vice-president of the enterprise analytics practice, Cognizant, modern day analytics empower businesses in a whole new way.
“Even a small insight or foresight can generate millions in revenue or shave off millions from the cost base of our clients,” he said. “So, while revenue from such engagements is important, what is crucial is the value that we are able to create for our clients. For Cognizant, analytics is a strategic and transformational lever in all our client engagements.”
There are plenty of places you can learn more about the kind of software that’s out there. But even if you or your business doesn’t have the capital outlay to spare on this kind of software, just understanding the marketplace can go a long way to helping you make better, more informed decisions. Just look at the processes that other businesses are trying to automate, and see if your own supply chain could benefit from similar decisions. For us in the music industry, it comes down to deciding which data is actually useful. On a largely deserted network like myspace, views might not be so important, but figuring out what does and does not work for an artist on youtube views can be an essential metric. How those translate into actual record sales is another story entirely!
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc2009032_101762.htm
http://www.livemint.com/2011/05/18212447/Information-technology-vendors.html?atype=tp
Entertainment Industry Getting Smart About Business Intelligence Software
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