Watching the Super Bowl, and the excitement surrounding it a couple of weeks ago got me thinking about Return on Investment, and what it actually means for different types of marketing activity.
The Super Bowl is probably the most anticipated event in the American sports calendar and this year it was estimated that businesses paid up to $3.5 million for a 30 second advertisement during it! No one can deny the power of brand presence during the game, and this price tag demonstrates that, but managers must surely have a challenge to quantify and justify this sort of spend.
According to reports the most successful commercial this year was for the 2013 Lexus GS (source Edmunds.com) with the brands latest model experiencing a 190 percent ‘lift in consideration’ during the game. The question to be asked then is how does this result translate into actual sales and revenue? Consideration is not a purchase, but how else can we measure success in this scenario? There may be some who judge by the amount of social network activity following the advert being unveiled and some that measure by share of voice – but what about the actual revenue attached to these results?
Web site hits are a relatively simple way of judging whether a campaign has sparked interest, but where do you go from there if, as with cars, you are unlikely to get an immediate purchase from a website enquiry. This will inevitably lead to a number of questions. What’s the average enquiry through to customer conversion rate, and what is the lifetime value to your business of a typical customer? There are other statistics that are important too when analysing a campaign, or the success of a specific product, including market share and profit margins and costs for acquisition and retention of customers that can help to demonstrate whether you are getting the best ROI for your spend.
Of course the results of specific campaigns depend upon your decided objectives, but $3.5 million still seems an awful lot to pay for 30 seconds especially  when you consider that many people have Sky + and can skip adverts!....
 

dhc recently ran a customer webinar covering the Access Dimensions data structures, enquiries and reporting options. We are now using the Citrix ‘Go to Webinar’ facility which proved to provide a superior visual and technical experience for users, and allows registrants to listen either via telephone or through inbuilt microphones or headphones. The feedback we received was excellent.
During this hour long session, dhc’s Managing Director Richard Gyles looked first at the data structures within Dimensions showing how important it is that the system is set up efficiently with sort fields populated to allow information to be pulled out quickly and easily. The session then moved on to cover the standard reporting provided within Dimensions and Dimensions Lite. Flexible enquiry screens provide instant on-screen access to a huge array of information. For example, you can look up customer and supplier contact details, study their terms and credit position and view budget/actual costs on projects or nominal reports whilst holding multiple screens open at one time. You can drill down to display or print source transactions – or drill across to find similar or associated records using flexible Smart Tag technology. Whatever your enquiry, you have easy access to a 360 degree view of all related information.
Richard then showcased the additional reporting options that are available to enhance the system in a delivery format of your choice. These tools include iConnekt Enquire which provides web based access to Crystal reports to financial or non-financial users. We also looked at the free Microsoft Query facility which comes with Office and allows information to be exported out into Excel for visibility. Moving on, we covered Access Office Integration which provides pivot table functionality, integration into Word, Excel and Outlook which allows you to gain a better understanding of your business with powerful analytical tools. Data cubes, the easy to use business intelligence functionality, enable decision-makers in every department to monitor performance, spot trends, and identify opportunities. Access Report Writer is a tool that allows users to build reports using the data structure, filters and parameters then allowing you to choose the report format of your choice. Access Dashboard is a third party browser based reporting and business intelligence tool, allowed using to track bank balances, top 10 performers and any KPI of your choice with dynamic data views of your changing business position. Your pre-defined information is presented in easy to use tables, grids and speedometer style graphics, whilst trends can be identified via graphs, charts and a simple traffic light system.
From boardroom basics to business intelligence, your key information is delivered to your schedule and available on demand – whether you’re on the internet, in the office or using your iPhone.
If you would like to view a recording of this webinar, contact Joanna.greig@dhcltd.com.
If the topics mentioned above are of interest, or you would like to discuss them in more detail, please do not hesitate to contact either Jo Greig or Claire Williams on 01483 413 381 or by email: Joanna.greig@dhcltd.com and Claire.williams@dhcltd.com.
We look forward to welcoming our customers to future webinars and if there are any topics that you would like us to cover, please just let us know. We will be recording sessions going forward and are happy to provide links to sessions. If you would like to arrange a review meeting to have a catch up with regards to the systems that you have in place, please contact Jo who is happy to arrange this for you.
 

When systems start to slow down, reports can take longer to produce, users can be denied access, or everything might appear to freeze and stop working. This is not only frustrating but can lead to loss of business. These issues may force the user to incorrectly exit the software (switching the machine off/ rebooting/ending task) which might result in rollbacks or in the worst case data corruption.
Why would this suddenly happen when everything was fine yesterday? Generally it is because something has changed but attempting to identify what that is can be difficult. Has new software/new equipment been installed, or have there been network changes? With technology continually developing this is inevitable at some stage. Several or all of these components might be faulty, or not compatible with one other. It must be remembered therefore that changes impact on a wide area and the whole big picture must always be considered. With companies today outsourcing various elements of their business to others, it has become harder to manage.
Because the accounts system is a key area to a company's operations it is clearly visible here if things start to go wrong, therefore the first port of call is to ensure that the environment is correct, the database is well maintained, and customisation is fully compatible and optimised.
Here are a few tips on checking your environment is correct
1. Check that the hardware on all the workstations and servers is adequate to meet the users' needs.
2. Ensure that the network is configured for optimum performance. Performance Monitoring can be a good indicator and if regular comparison of results to baselines is carried out then you can be proactive rather than reactive.
3. Check basic SQL configuration complies with that supported by Access...
• master 80Mb (80Mb mdf 40Mb ldf)
• tempdb should be 25% of the largest datafile on that instance or a minimum of 80Mb (e.g. if the largest datafile is 1gb then set 250Mb mdf and 125Mb ldf)
• SQL properties for processor the ‘Parallelism’ set the specify number of processors to use for parallel execution of queries to parallelism set equals 1 (see Appendix A How to Configure SQL for Access Dimensions )
• SQL properties for memory to min 50% of the total memory and maximum setting being total memory less at least 128mb or that required by the operating system and adjust trigger settings (see Appendix A How to Configure SQL for Access Dimensions )
• Where multiple physical drives are available, separating the location of the LDF and MDF and the backup files optimises SQL performance.
4. Stop and start services regularly as this will clear all cached issues
5. Other software/applications can impact on performance eg MS Exchange running on the same server will take the processing resource available over SQL.