It's Not the Size of the Data -- It's How You Use It: Smarter Marketing with Analytics and Dashboards

"It's Not The Size Of The Data - It's How You Use It" by Professor Koen Pauwels plugs a gap between chatter about data and dashboards on the one hand and business reality on the other. Written in clear, everyday prose managers anywhere will readily understand, this book lays out concretely what dashboards are for, what they should include, how to build them and how to use them. Rather than taking a scorecard off the shelf that won't fit your organization's needs or, at the other extreme, building an overly-complex tool from scratch that tracks a huge number of misleading or meaningless metrics and KPIs, this book sets out in a logical and commonsense fashion how to put together a tool that can truly enhance decision-making. It provides useful guidelines on how to use analytics to the identify metrics and KPIs that really matter to your organization and how to integrate them through analytics - how to link input to output causally, in other words.The author does not offer a sugar-coated recipe, however, and the organizational challenges of making it all work are confronted head on. Backed up by a considerable amount of research and experience and illustrated with numerous case studies, it's hard to see how anyone working in marketing, marketing research, advertising, finance or even IT would not find this book useful. I would also recommend it to data scientists whose work is related to marketing or advertising.

In a time where 'analytics' is a buzz word, and books on this topic are a dime-a-dozen, Dr Pauwels' book cuts through the clutter in many ways. For starters, this is a book by a top academic, who has successfully done analytics all his life - even before analytics was cool! Second, this book does not pretend to do it all. For example, there is no promise made of teaching the most complex models using just excel, or being a complete guide to big data / data analytics. Rather, INTSOD sticks to the crucial first step in data analytics, that of Dashboard creation, and guides the reader through all the intricate steps related to it (more on that below). And finally, it does so in a manner that is approachable, while still not dumbing down the science behind it.This book makes a convincing argument that Dashboards are the critical first step before any firm begins a successful data analytics program. Dr Pauwels guides us through all the intricate steps involved in making dashboards an integral part of a firm's culture. Each step is detailed, from getting the right data, the scientifically most efficient ways of displaying it, the techniques for choosing the right metrics, and even tackling office politics in getting dashboards implemented ('organization behavior'). Dr Pauwels also provides several interesting case studies, mostly based on his own personal experience, which give a very real-world feel to the whole discussion.In short, a must-have for any individual or firm that aims to understand or implement a successful Dashboard and Analytics program.

i highly suggest this book for all marketers the information in this book is very well connected and well explaining the concepts in addition providing tangible case studiesthis book preparing you well to setup your organization dashboard