What's Your Elevator Pitch?

Next week, the Business Intelligence Network will be publishing an article on how you can better promote your BI application.

One of the simplest, most important promotional tools is your elevator pitch. So before I spoil the surprise, take a minute and write down your 1-minute elevator pitch as it stands today. Assume a business person met you in the elevator asked you these questions:

• What are you working on?
• What’s this data warehouse all about?

Write down your 1-minute answer or post a comment to this blog. Then read the full article here, tweak your elevator pitch accordingly, and I will highlight specific suggestions for a few lucky blog commenters - otherwise known as free consulting! :)

Regards,

Cindi Howson

Founder, BIScorecard

Author: Successful Business Intelligence: Secrets to Making BI a Killer App

Comments

[CJ]

What are you working on?
I'm working with the I/S teams responsible for business intelligence solutions. It's about being ready to deliver the business information that our company needs to compete and achieve our strategic goals around customer satisfaction, growth, retention and financial strength. We integrate information related to many of our most important business activities (like sales and claims) and we're starting to pull in more third-party information as well.

What's this data warehouse all about?
The data warehouse a centralized storehouse of information that we collect about our business and maintain over time. From it we can answer questions about how the business is performing, and discover patterns and trends that lead to increased sales, strong customer satisfaction, or reduced risk exposure. Technically it's a very large database that contains information from all of our key systems as well as certain external information that we purchase to complete our business processes.

[CJ]

I've read through to the section of your b-eye-newsletter where you talk about elevator pitches now. I'm not sure what I would change about what I wrote previously, but would welcome your recommendations. Thanks--CJ

[Rich]

We provide the best, most complete information available to state decision makers. Current projects include fraud detection, providing acurate, actionable data to Children's Welfare workers and mangers, and joining multiple departments to support the effort to eliminate homelessness.

[Cindi Howson]

Rich, this is an excellent elevator pitch! So did you already have this down or was it tweaked after reading the article?
Be sure that all your BI team co-workers know the pitch and articulate the value of BI so well!

Regards,
Cindi Howson

[Cindi Howson]

Hi, CJ,

Thank you for trying this exercise out. Your answers are good - certainly much less techno babble than some I have seen. I would however, like to make a few suggestions.

I've pasted your answers below and my comments are in [brackets]
What are you working on?
I'm working with the I/S teams responsible for business intelligence solutions. [Is there an us vs them mindset at your company? I would maybe cut the reference to I/S teams and just start with the next sentence - I'm working on solutions to deliver ....] It's about being ready to deliver the business information that our company needs to compete and achieve our strategic goals around customer satisfaction, growth, retention and financial strength. [excellent] We integrate information related to many of our most important business activities (like sales and claims) and we're starting to pull in more third-party information as well. [Hmmm on third party information. That it's third party is very technical. Can you be more specific about the value of getting to this external data? I don't know what industry you work in, but something like "we're getting to data than allows you to benchmark our prices with competitors" or "bringing in supplier data will let us negotiate better discounts or ensure greater service."]

What's this data warehouse all about?
The data warehouse a centralized storehouse of information that we collect about our business and maintain over time. [No, no, no - they don't really want to know what a data warehouse is or what the plumbing is. Unless of course you have already provided that first answer. Give them the value of BI first, and then if they ask about the technology, this might be okay.] From it we can answer questions about how the business is performing, and discover patterns and trends that lead to increased sales, strong customer satisfaction, or reduced risk exposure. [great] Technically it's a very large database that contains information from all of our key systems as well as certain external information that we purchase to complete our business processes. [good as long as you have first given them the value of BI].