Drowning in data!
Posted by Ajay Kelkar on Sun, Jul 26, 2009
Companies around the world
are literally drowning in data. A typical airline or retailer, for example, is
collecting data from many operational systems and storing terabytes, if not
petabytes, of data. But how closely do CMO’s and CIO’s actually work or are
they often at cross purposes! In India and I am sure in other furiously growing
markets as well, IT is so busy building the basic infrastructure to manage the
business that they often ignore the strategic priorities that Marketing is
trying to drive!
Paul
Barsch writes about how the chasm between Marketing & IT can be bridged in
this interesting article “Preparing for the Future: How the CIO and CMO Must
Collaborate to Win”
Paul
has some very interesting view points that you can have a look at http://paulbarsch.wordpress.com/
He has
this interesting take
“However, two powerful exponential trends (growth rates of data and
technology), will dramatically affect enterprise operations, forcing the
marketing and IT functions to communicate and collaborate like never before.
Moore's Law, conceptualized by Intel pioneer Gordon Moore, states that
the number of transistors per microprocessor will double every two years. This exponential
increase in processing speeds for various machines/devices will eventually
enable advances in economics, biology, technology, business, and other key
fields.
The second powerful exponential trend is the increasing amount of data
that companies must contend with on a daily basis. According to a Forrester
Research report titled "Data, Data Everywhere,"
the "volume of the world's data doubles approximately every three years"!
And for most companies data isn't conveniently stored in one central
location—it is often found on spreadsheets, data marts, and storage devices
strewn across the enterprise. In fact, in many organizations, marketers are a
key culprit in the creation and upkeep of separate "pocket databases"
containing customer lists and purchase histories.
And while capturing and storing relevant data is a challenge, an
additional obstacle is analyzing and translating this data into actionable
information to improve the customer experience or drive operational efficiencies.”
Paul makes this interesting comment: “Marketers need fresh and
accurate data for advanced marketing functions such as better segmentation,
more effective campaigns and offers, and relevant interactions with the
customer across multiple touchpoints. And CIOs realize that the benefits of
creating a single source of relevant and accurate data for business analytics
go far beyond helping marketers get closer to customers—and in fact benefit all
aspects of company operations. Both the CIO and CMO have a stake in the
development and implementation of an analytical infrastructure capable of
turning data into actionable information that in turn enables better
decision-making not just in marketing but across the enterprise.”
Our take at Cequity
1.
Are
you creating forums by which the IT department can better understand your
marketing agenda?
2.
Is
the CMO championing areas where there is an overlap with the CIO/CTO- eg Data
quality, Service oriented architecture etc?