Birst Constructs Single Source of Customer Insight for Build.com

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Sep 10, 2013) - Birst Inc., the leader in Cloud BI, today announced that Build.com, the leading online-only home improvement retailer, is gaining greater customer insight by using Birst's enterprise-caliber business intelligence (BI) platform to quickly and easily combine and analyze a variety of customer-related data. Leveraging this insight will enable Build.com to extend its customer lifetime value, decrease customer acquisition costs (as a percentage of revenue), and focus on acquiring more profitable customers to boost overall business results.

As one of the 100 largest Internet retailers in the United States, Build.com is using Birst to create a single source of customer-related information by combining customer web analytics with other key customer data from multiple sources. Birst is analyzing this information to calculate the lifetime value of Build.com customers and layer that information over the organization's attribution model in order to determine the origination of customers of varying levels of profitability. With this insight, Build.com is able to increase revenue by narrowing its focus to channels and activities that are generating the most profitable customers. Brandon Proctor, Vice President of Marketing for Build.com, is keen on incorporating data and analytics to help solve for business challenges. "The new actionable insights we gain will enable us to propel our growth at an even faster rate, while maintaining efficiency and, ultimately, profitability."

To provide consumers and professionals with a smarter shopping experience, Build.com is also using Birst to develop more effective models for personalizing customers' online experiences. By analyzing customers' propensity to buy when provided with specific product recommendations, Build.com is better able to recommend the right product at the right time, reducing customer touch points prior to purchase and decreasing customer acquisition costs. Likewise, Build.com is extending the lifecycle of desirable customers by using Birst to better understand the types of customer interactions that are likely to lead to additional product purchases.

Additionally, Birst is enabling Build.com to automate a variety of regular reporting and analysis related to organizational performance. With access to a unified source of information and intuitive online dashboards with drill-down capabilities, Build.com is gaining greater, more transparent, and consistent insight across the organization. This, in turn, is enabling employees to more easily collaborate, focus on other business needs, and make faster, more-informed decisions.

"Birst is providing us with a distinct advantage across the marketplace," said Brandon Proctor, Vice President of Marketing, Build.com. "With Birst, we're increasing efficiencies, decreasing costs, making better decisions, and improving employee productivity. We expect to save more than 100 hours per month in time spent generating reports now that we have access to a single, centralized source of information. All of these benefits -- including greater revenue, and time and costs saved -- represent additional resources we're now able to reinvest in growing our business."

To provide its employees with fast access to vital information and free valuable IT resources to focus on other areas of the business, Build.com sought a cloud-based BI solution offering advanced data visualization capabilities and the ability to easily combine data from a variety of applications. In comparing a number of BI solutions, Build.com determined that Birst -- with its interactive dashboards, fully integrated ETL, pre-built data connectors, and automated data warehouse -- was uniquely suited to meet the organization's needs. Implemented in just a few weeks with help from DiamondStream, a Champion-level Birst implementation consultant, Birst is delivering self-service, enterprise-caliber analytics combined with all the benefits of software-as-a-service (SaaS).

"In the online world, it's imperative that organizations be able to think, move, and grow -- fast," said Brad Peters, CEO of Birst. "Birst's Cloud BI platform makes it possible for online retailers like Build.com to quickly access the actionable insight they need to make data-driven decisions that produce real results." 

About Birst
Birst is the only enterprise-caliber Business Intelligence platform born in the cloud. Less costly and more agile than Legacy BI and more powerful than Data Discovery, Birst is engineered with an automated data warehouse and rich, visual analytics, to give meaning to data -- all types and sizes. Coupled with the agility of the Cloud, Birst gives business teams the ability to solve real problems. Fast. Find out why Gartner named Birst a Challenger in its most recent BI Magic Quadrant and why more than a thousand businesses rely on Birst for their analytic needs. Learn to think fast at www.birst.com and join the conversation @birstbi.