Big Data & Digital Marketing

Top Performers consistently apply analytics in almost every activity across their organization. They prefer Analytics over Intuition 5 times more than Low Performers.

This Survey by MIT Sloan, in collaboration with IBM, draws a clear picture on how organizations can approach big data, what the major challenges are and how a successful analytics culture can be established.

Organizations are usually found in one of these 3 stages:

1. Aspirational: just started with analytics. The main target is to improve cost efficiency. Are not very rigorous.

2. Experienced: use analytics to guide actions, target at growing revenues, some use of rigorous approaches, applications are limited for future strategies.

3. Transformed: use analytics to prescribe actions, use analytics at all levels also in day-by-day activities, use rigorous approaches.

Sometimes organizations transition from state 1 to 2 to 3.

The Survey suggests a 5-step methodology for successfully implementing analytics-driven management:

1. Focus on the biggest and highest value opportunities

2. Within each opportunity, start with questions, not data

3. Embed insights to drive actions and deliver value

4. Keep existing capabilities while adding new ones

5. Use an information agenda to plan the future

1. Finding new markets and leads

2. Driving repeat sales

3. Reduced prospect research time

4. Predict future sales

Customers expect a lot. They want the right product or service to fit their needs, they want it quickly, and want it to work well.

Data plays into satisfying all of those goals. At its core, data for the small business means streamlining processes and finding what is most relevant to customers.

Here are the main two guidelines:

1. Decisions should be informed by data;

2. Departments within the company need to measure everything.