Cloud applications like Salesforce, Marketo and Concur are more popular than ever. They improve efficiency and offer many business benefits. As with the data from your on-premise applications, however, the cloud data needs to be part of your BI strategy.
Often, the cloud applications provide a level or reporting and BI that is useful up to a point, but most companies need data from many different sources. Your BI strategy should take into account all these different data sources, whether on-premise or in-cloud, and pull the data together for comprehensive analysis.
How we've helped others with their BI and analytics needs for cloud applications:
- Helped a financial services company that needed to integrate data from Salesforce and Google Analytics so they could analyze their marketing campaigns and sales pipeline. By integrating this data with financial data they became able to discern the cost of customer acquisition and determine which customers were most profitable.
- An information services provider asked for our help in pulling data from Salesforce and Marketo so they could analyze their marketing campaigns and tie it in with their cloud-based financial applications. This led to a clearer picture of their costs and customer profitability.

Our insights on BI and analytics for cloud applications:
- Leveraging today’s cloud data management technology and tools
- Orange is the New Black and Cloud Apps are the new Data Shadow Systems
- Cloud databases less of a leap for users now, but some hurdles remain
- Which BI analytics tool does my company need?
- Using predictive analytics tools and setting up an analytics program
- Analytics Best Practices: The Analytical Hub
- Analytics Best Practices: The Analytical Sandbox
- A Better Way to Fuel Analytical Needs