With New Relic Insights, you automatically start collecting billions of valuable page view and transaction-related events straight out of the box. Developers are the gatekeepers to a company's data, and with Insights, developers are empowered to interact with valuable data like never before. These 5 user cases will illustrate how.

1. Use Case
© Copyright 2014, New Relic, Inc. All rights reserved. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.01
5 Real-World Use Cases for
New Relic Insights
As the gatekeeper to a company’s application data, developers
are both in a position of power and in a position of being stretched
incredibly thin. The developer holds the answers to all of the
business team’s most burning questions, whether it’s about
the effectiveness of the Marketing team’s latest lead-gen campaign,
or understanding how the Customer Success team can resolve
support tickets faster and more effectively.
Questions are flying constantly. And while you, the dedicated
developer, of course want to help out your co-workers, you also
have your real job, which is to build, maintain, and optimize the
company’s core software products. You don’t have time to set up
nightly jobs that run ad hoc analytics queries for hours against
the production database, only to find out in the morning that you
got the query wrong. What you really need is a tool that lets
you (and them) run analytics queries on the fly; something that lets
you ask your software questions and get answers in real time.
New Relic Insights, available in beta, and free for a limited time,
is a cloud-based, real-time analytics platform that empowers
developers and business users to interact with data like never
before. The following five use cases will show you exactly how.
Marketing
The likely scenario
Your Marketing team ran five different promotions to drive adoption
of your software product over the last two days. The marketing
manager now wants to know how well each promotion did and what
the appropriate next steps should be.
The person the marketing manager will ask for help
You, the developer, of course!
The questions your marketing manager will ask you
Which of the five promotions were most effective in driving
adoption of the product?
A Real-Time Analytics Platform Like No Other
With New Relic Insights, you automatically start collecting
billions of valuable page view and transaction-related events
straight out of the box. That’s all thanks to a unique real-time
analytics platform that:
Collects data via intelligent agents directly from your software
Stores volumes of data (trillions of events) without
requiring you to lift a finger
Presents your data in easy-to-understand charts and graphs
You can easily add more types of data – data specific to your
software and business – to get deeper, more actionable insights
about your software, customers, and business. It’s as easy as
adding one line of code to your software for each new type of data
you want to collect. We call this data a custom attribute and
below is an example of how you would add a custom attribute
to your Java application.
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2. 5 Real-World Use Cases for New Relic Insights
© Copyright 2014, New Relic, Inc. All rights reserved. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.02
Did a particular promotion cause a specific feature to be
used more?
Who is using this new feature more – existing
or new customers?
Do customers who use this new feature belong to a certain
industry or company size?
The data that holds the answers
Promotion codes
Feature names
Customer ID
Customer created date
Customer company size
Customer industry
By adding the above custom attributes into your application code,
you can now instantly pull up a dashboard that gives the Marketing
team the answers they’re looking for. The marketing manager can
learn, for example, that a specific promotion caused new customers
in the financial industry to pick up a particular feature more than
your existing customers, and can then put together a plan to better
encourage adoption of the feature among existing customers.
Sales
The likely scenario
One of the company’s sales superheroes has a prospect
participating in a free trial, and she wants to do everything she
can to win their business.
The person the salesperson will ask for help
That wicked smart developer guy on the 12th floor
The questions the salesperson will ask you
Who is actively using the product during the trial – users or
decision makers?
Are they using the product’s most valuable features?
Are they having any problems with the product (e.g. poor
response time, errors)?
How many times and for how long are they using the product
per day?
The data that holds the answers
Customer name
Customer email
Feature name
Session duration
Performance data (comes out of the box)
With these custom attributes, you can empower the sales team
with a dashboard that allows them to be proactive throughout
the buying cycle. The sales superhero can constantly keep an eye
on the prospect’s free trial status and ensure they’re getting the
best experience possible to close the deal. If the trial’s not going
so great, she can save it by proactively contacting the prospect
to help them with any problems or concerns.
Customer Success
The likely scenario
As your customer success manager likes to remind everyone,
“Happy customers are the best customers.” He wants you to help
him track customer engagement and happiness with the click
of a mouse. That way, the next time a customer support call
comes in, he’ll already know what it’s about.
The person the customer success manager will
ask for help
Gee, I wonder who...?
The questions the customer success manager will ask you
Who are our top customers by revenue?
How often and for how long are they using the product?
Within our top customers, are there specific users who are
having a poor experience?
If so, who are they and how do I contact them?
The data that holds the answers
Revenue
Feature name
Session duration
Customer name
Customer email
Performance data (comes out of the box)
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3. 5 Real-World Use Cases for New Relic Insights
© Copyright 2014, New Relic, Inc. All rights reserved. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.03
The key to providing excellent customer support is to stay one
step ahead and anticipate what a customer may want or need.
This is especially important when engaging with your most
valuable customers. Using custom attributes like revenue and
feature name, you can create a dashboard of key performance
indicators that the Customer Success team can use to better serve
your top customers, and be proactive in keeping them happy.
Product Management
The likely scenario
Last week, your product management team launched a new
feature and they want to know who’s using it and who’s
not. The product manager wants to understand why certain
customers aren’t using the feature, and how they can partner
with the Customer Success or Sales teams to get them on board.
The person the product manager will ask for help
Ding-ding-ding! His pal in engineering.
The questions the product manager will ask you
Who is adopting the new feature?
Have they only used it once or have they been using it regularly?
Do adoption rates differ by gender, age group, or geography?
How is the feature performing?
The data that holds the answers
Feature name
Customer/user ID
Gender
Age
Geography (comes out of the box)
Performance data (comes out of the box)
With New Relic Insights, you can easily offer the product manager
a wealth of information about the new feature’s usage and adoption.
If, for example, the dashboard you created shows that only 20% of
females in San Francisco adopted the feature, the product manager
may consider changing the branding or UI to better appeal to that
demographic. If adoption is low across the board, he then might
decide if it’s worth spending more time to refine the feature.
Executive Team
The likely scenario
Your CEO has come to you with what initially seemed like a
harmless question. But lo and behold, what began as a simple
request for information has turned into a flurry of follow-up
questions to get data sets she needs for the big board meeting.
The person the CEO will ask for help
The MVP of the company (the developer, duh)
The questions the CEO will ask you
Can I just get this one number?
Actually, can I get a breakdown of this metric on a month-by-
month basis?
How does that breakdown compare to last year’s numbers?
And by the way, can you give me an ETA for when that new
feature is shipping?
The data that holds the answers
Revenue
User demographics
Feature names
Product names
Promotion codes
Partner IDs
Session duration
And everything else you can think of
To get ahead of the CEO’s curveball questions, you have to collect
as much of the relevant data as you can, and assume their series
of questions will iterate and evolve over time. You never know
when or what the executive team will ask, so the more you track
now, the better prepared you’ll be in the future.
Be Prepared with New Relic Insights
The five use cases above are just the beginning. Create your own
unique use cases for New Relic Insights, available in beta, and free
for a limited time. Start making better business decisions today.
Visit www.newrelic.com/insights.
Or check out the New Relic Insights community forum to engage
with other beta users.
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