As more of us spend more of our lives interacting with technology, the
value of the data garnered from this behaviour becomes more and more valuable
to businesses. In principle, every
click generates a data point, every comment given a valence, and every sequence
of clicks can be tracked.
Multiply this by the number of actual and potential customers, across all
of a company’s touch points and very soon you can be generating exabytes of
data, constantly updated in real time.
Combine this with the pressure on companies to utilize this data for its competitive
value to the business and the race is on to input, store, analyse and output
data, data, data …
The temptation is to solve this problem as a matter of urgency; all the
while the data keeps coming in a deluge. It is easy to get immersed in the details and the
difficulties, when it is actually time to step back and out of it to see the
bigger picture, to find the value and to realize the limitations. So get a cup
of tea, find a quiet corner and ask the important questions such as:
-
who are my most valuable customers and what do they value?
-
What are my ambassadors and detractors talking about? In other words what
are my competitive strengths and weaknesses?
-
What are the significant changes in consumers’ behaviour (using a
timescale that the business can respond to)?
-
What is important to my customers, using micro, meso and macro lenses (i.e.
individual touchpoint experience, the acquisition and usage of my product in
their life, and the bigger picture of their lives in context)?
-
What are they doing now vs what would they like to be doing (again using
micro, meso and macro lenses)?
Now, how can you organize your data around answering these important
questions? Understand where data
can and can’t help and where other sources of information are needed. And get the team with the right technical, strategic and practical skills working together to achieve this common goal.
Keep focused on the big questions your business asks, not on what
detailed analysis your data can provide.
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