In today's information age, organizations have loads of data but only a small percentage of that data is being converted into information that results in actionable knowledge for the decision makers. In the attached presentation I have tried to define the process of Data, Information, Knowledge, and Decision/Action. The process is defined based on an online marketing business.

1. Data  Information  Knowledge  Action
(empowering the business decision making)
Shahid J. Butt

2. A web site as a Business Case
• The example used here is for a web site (name has been changed) that provides users the
ability to search and compare various products/services like loan refinancing, auto
insurance, cell phones etc.
• The organization owning the website runs various marketing campaigns to attract
visitors to the site. Business would like to measure the effectiveness of the campaigns
in terms of profitability.
• Upon landing on the website page and after submitting an application the customer
request is matched with multiple vendors providing the services.
• The next slide shows how and where does a campaign start in order to bring a
customer to the website, what are different stages that a customer goes through
before committing to an action that results in revenue for the business.

3. Channel:
Channel
Medium through which web traffic is driven to the website.
• Affiliates
• Media
• No Campaign
• Retention Emails
• Search Engine
Affiliates
Media (MSN, Yahoo etc.)
Retention Emails
Search Engine
Impression/Text Link
Click
Impression/Text Link:
• An impression is an image that is shown to a potential customer. It could be a
pop up, ad banner etc.
• A text link is simply a URL link on a site (for example an affiliate site) which redirects traffic to the website.
Click:
• Action of clicking on an impression or a text link. This action brings the potential
customer to the website.
• You may or may not have click for an impression
Session:
• Once a visitor lands on the site as a result of clicking on an impression or text
link a session is started and a web log entry is created in the web logs.
Cost
Session
Inquiry
Inquiry:
• Application submitted by a customer. An Application contains multiple pages.
• The customer information provided through the application gets fed to the
matching engine in the back end.
Lead:
• A completed inquiry is run through the matching engine and a lead is generated
if a match is found. The lead results into revenue for the business.
Lead
$Rev
Cost:
• The amount of money paid to various publishers and affiliates for advertising
and marketing the website
• Cost is calculated differently for different cost structures. Example: CPA (Cost
per application, CPC (Cost per click), CPT (Cost per thousand impressions)

4. Where is the data stored?
• Every single action shown in the funnel on the previous slide generates variety of data
starting from presenting an impression/link on a potential customer’s browser, visiting the
targeted web site, and then finally taking an action to either abandoning or committing a
revenue generating transaction.
• The data is stored at various locations, for example the Impressions and the clicks on
those impressions are stored on the Ad-Serving agency’s (like double-click) servers.
Publishers and affiliates also have their own data stores tracking different activities.
The targeted web site also has it’s own data in the web logs and the databases.

5. Sample of a web log after a potential customer visits mywebsite.com
Web Logs
• Does this data make any sense?
• Can any meaningful information be
extracted out of this just by looking at
these raw logs?
• I’m sure the answer will be resounding
no.
• These raw logs constitute the Data stage
which companies have in abundance in
today’s information age.
• Having just the data alone does not
provide much business benefit.
Data
webserver1.mywebsite.com 10.1.11.233 - [28/Jun/2012:01:54:03 -0700] "GET
/fh/refinance/refinanceWizardOnePage.jsp?sourceid=sid3761-4914 HTTP/1.1" 200 22469 "-" "Mozilla/4.0
(compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)" 0
"10.1.11.233.1119948843946782"
"SERVER_COOKIE=10.1.11.233.1119948843955555; path=/;
expires=Thu, 28-Jun-07 08:54:03 GMT"

6. Extracting the Information
Client IP Address
Target website
Address
Date/Time Stamp
of the Log
webserver1.mywebsite.com 10.1.11.233 - - [28/Jun/2012:01:54:03 -0700] "GET
/fh/refinance/refinanceWizardOnePage.jsp?sourceid=sid-3761-4914 HTTP/1.1" 200 22469
"-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)" 0
"10.1.11.233.1119948843946782" "SERVER_COOKIE=10.1.11.233.1119948843955555;
path=/; expires=Thu, 28-Jun-07 08:54:03 GMT"
The name of the
page visited
Cookie to uniquely
identify a visitor
ID used for
identifying a
campaign.
• The logs are starting to make some sense about the data. You can understand the individual data
elements but the context is still lacking. Up to this point the Information is extracted from the
available data.
Data
Information

7. Converting information to Knowledge
• Web log is one of the data sources but there are more
data sources that are required to complete the picture:
Impression/Clicks data from the ad serving agency
Cost data from publishers
Cost data from affiliates
Search engine cost data
Other internal data sources
• Data comes in all kinds of formats:
Excel Files
Text Files
XML Files
• The data is integrated with the web logs for different
marketing campaigns that result in web traffic for
mywebsite.com
• The integrated result provides the Knowledge or
actionable intelligence around the marketing campaigns.
Data
Information
Knowledge

8. Examples of knowledge gained after going through the three stages of Data, Information, and Knowledge
Data
Information
Knowledge
Month
Target
% Chg
90 day
% Chg
MTD
MTD
% Chg
Daily
% Chg
90 day
Net Contribution
% Chg
MTD
MTD
% Chg
Daily
% Chg
90 day
% Chg
MTD
MTD
% Chg
4.3
-2.6
2.5
Daily
% Chg
90 day
% Chg
MTD
Net Revenue
-3.1
MTD
% Chg
No Campaign
Other
Total
Inquiries
2.1
-1.3
0.2
-1.3
0.2
3.0
-2.5
4.5
0.5
-1.5
26
1
208
Affliates
144
28
15
6
9
7
32
14
12
1
4
Marketing
Source
Media
MSN
yahoo
bankrate
weatherbug
aol
Search Engine
Google
Overture
Retention
Daily
Sessions

9. Examples continued…..
• This kind of knowledge would have
not been possible without going
through the Data, Information, and
Knowledge stages.
• Now marketing managers are in a
much better position to monitor
each campaign from different angles
and make fact based decisions in the
best interest of the business.
Data
Information
Knowledge

10. Decision Making/Action
• Business intelligence is ineffective if no decisions or
actions are taken based on the information provided.
• In the case of online marketing campaign, business might
take one or more of the following actions:
• Re-negotiate costs with publishers
• Abandon campaigns resulting in lost revenue
• Negotiate higher prices with vendors for
products resulting in high quality leads.
• Customize/Optimize campaigns for different
regions
Data
Information
Knowledge
Action

11. Competing on Analytics
• Hopefully the presentation was able to provide a basic
understanding of the business intelligence process and
it’s power.
• Organizations who are quick to adopt and mature in the
process certainly gain a competitive edge.
• More information can be found about the BI maturity
models and frameworks at the following links:
http://h20195.www2.hp.com/v2/GetPDF.aspx%2F4AA3-9723EEW.pdf
http://tdwi.org/pages/posters/business-intelligence-usability/download.aspx
http://www.gartner.com/imagesrv/summits/docs/na/business-intelligence/gartners_business_analytics__219420.pdf
Data
Information
Knowledge
Action