Is your Organisation Part of the Connected Consumer Revolution?
The connected consumer revolution is upon us and while many companies are just coming to terms with the idea that Big Data can seriously impact their longevity, the need to develop data-driven strategies to remain relevant is becoming ever more urgent.
Knowing that Big Data is important is one thing; having the right tools and systems to leverage it, is a completely different story.
A recent CIO whitepaper revealed that while 99% of businesses consider data and analytics to be important to their organisations, only 85% of executives are struggling to accurately analyse and interpret the data they have.
The problem? They don’t know what data they should be collecting to gain the best insights. And then they don’t know what to do with the data they collect.
“Big data really is about having insights and making an impact on your business. If you aren’t taking advantage of the data you’re collecting, then you just have a pile of data, you don’t have big data.”
Jay Parikh, VP of Infrastructure Engineering, Facebook
The way forward: 3 ways to gain control over your organisation’s data
Get on board the social train
If you’re not capturing relevant social data about your market, who they are, what they like / dislike, their buying preferences and expectations, then your data has a large chunk missing. Without these kinds of insights, you won’t have the knowledge needed to create meaningful user experiences, brand loyalty and return customers. It no longer suffices to only provide a great product or service; your company needs to enhance the customer experience in the most relevant way, across the most relevant channel for your customer; or face losing them.
Ditch the filing cabinet
The most important data you can hold within your organisation (i.e. your customer’s) needs a place for it be relevant and useful to you. Using a tool that can combine and analyse both structured (name, d.o.b, address etc.) and unstructured data (social network, hobbies etc.) will provide you with the best insights into your customer.
Close the business loop
Identifying and analysing the right data is only good enough if you can then empower your workforce who are in contact with the customer to make quick and accurate decisions that drive growth and customer loyalty. Providing the call centre with a complete view of the customer, their purchase history, their product preference and other relevant data will ensure that you see value and ROI on your data strategy.
Now is the time to re-evaluate your data strategy – or develop one, to ensure that you are in the right mix for the next generation of business insights.
This article is based on a blog post previously published by me at Blue Ocean Systems
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