ESSAYS


DATA IS THE GREATEST SOURCE OF POWER IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY”


PHIL WORMS, MARKETING DIRECTOR, iOMART GROUP PLC


For me data, or information, is


SAM ZINDEL, DATA STRATEGIST, iCROSSING


There aren’t many businesses


that would claim they are short of data. Quite the opposite – most companies are drowning in it, particularly in the B2C sector. Social networks and website interactions have fuelled a rapid growth in rich, unstructured data. The cloud and big data technologies have enabled us to process large volumes of complex data to uncover new insights into consumer behaviour, and effective management of your audience’s data is vital. But it’s equally important to recognise the immediate data requirements of your business which may not necessitate big data solutions quite yet. Whilst the opportunities which new technology has provided are plenty, the fundamentals of a successful data strategy haven’t changed. You should utilise the appropriate technology for your business, managed by the right people, at the right cost to deliver the insight that you need to succeed.


the greatest source of power in the twenty-first century. It’s omnipresent. Today everything we do – every text we write, every site we browse, every video we watch, every purchase we make – is captured and stored. Each of us is a little hub of data – a Data Sapiens if you like – and as such we are legitimate targets for advertisers and marketers. We analyse and compute the zettabytes of data produced every day to entice consumers with products and services which we believe will improve or enhance their lives.


Behind this is the cloud – not some


dystopian ‘Blade Runner’ universe but a physical network of data centres saving, storing, analysing and distributing every byte. These steam engines of the modern age are being pushed to ever greater capacity by the sheer volume of information that each and every one of us creates on a daily basis. Storage capacity is now the biggest


challenge we face. Just as you wouldn’t file every piece of paper you’ve ever produced or received, you don’t need to backup – or make a copy of – every pixel generated. You need to be selective. So we are creating a new breed of storage system – the intelligent platform – one that only replicates the latest or most important pieces of information that need to be kept. A new Darwinism is developing and it’s called data selection.


DEBBIE OATES, PRINCIPAL CONSULTANT, DATA & ANALYTICS, EXPERIAN MARKETING SERVICES


Data can be collected on


customers from a variety of sources – email, search, and selected preferences to name a few. Organisations need to assess what data they can collect, how it can impact their business, if it can drive decisions and how it needs to be consolidated. Crucially, organisations cannot hold data in silos as this severely restricts its use. Creating a data hub is imperative – getting the relevant data on consumers into one place where it can be analysed and actioned. The key here is linkage – making sure that you use big data to see a customer across channels, be they digital or traditional. Once an effective system is in place,


greater data capture will increase the importance of modelling to predict customer behaviour, and the ability to use the data collected to trigger activity based on what it tells you about the customer. It also allows for dynamic segmentations where the customer can change state, based on their behaviour – for example email engagement or customer life- stage. This will lead to organisations having a far greater mix of models, segments and triggers which they can overlay on customers like different lenses to provide different views dependent on the circumstance.


41 issue 17 may 2013


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