Three quarters of this planet’s surface is covered with water. Yet, human collectives have to work constantly to maintain a steady supply of fresh water. When one area is flooded, another region may be going through some serious drought. It is about distribution of resources, not about the sheer amount of them.
Data management is the same way. We are clearly living in the age of abundant data, but many decision-makers complain that there are not enough “useful” data or insights. Why is that?
Like any resource like water, data may be locked in wrong places or in inadequate forms. We hear about all kinds of doomsday scenarios related to the water supply in Africa, and it is because of uneven distribution of water thanks to drastic climate change and border disputes. Conversely, California is running out of its water sources, even as the state is sitting right next to a huge pond called the Pacific Ocean. Water, in that case, is in a wrong form for the end-users there.
Data must flow through organizations like water; and to be useful, they must be in consumable formats. I have been emphasizing the importance of the data refinement process throughout this series (refer to “Cheat Sheet: Is Your Database Marketing Ready?” and “It’s All about Ranking”). In the data business, too much emphasis has been put on data collection platforms and toolsets that enable user interface, but not enough on the middle part where data are aligned, cleaned and reformatted though analytics. Most of the trouble, unfortunately, happens due to inadequate data, not because of storage platforms and reporting tools.
This month, nonetheless, let’s talk about the distribution of data. It doesn’t matter how clean and organized the data sources are, if they are locked in silos. Ironically, that is how this term “360-degree customer view” became popular, as most datasets are indeed channel- or division-centric, not customer-centric.
It is not so difficult to get to that consensus in any meeting. Yeah sure, let’s put all the data together in one place. Then, if we just open the flood gates and lead all of the data to a central location, will all the data issues go away? Can we just call that new data pond a “marketing database”? (Refer to “Marketing and IT; Cats and Dogs.”)
The short answer is “No way, no sir.” I have seen too many instances where IT and marketing try to move the river of data and fail miserably, thanks to the sheer size of such construction work. Maybe they should have thought about reducing the amount of data before constructing a monumental canal of data? Like in life, moving time is the best time to throw things away.
IT managers instinctively try to avoid any infrastructure failure, along with countless questions that would rise out of dumping “all” of the data on top of marketers’ laps. And for the sake of the users who can’t really plow through every bit of data anyway, we’ve got to be smarter about moving the data around.
The first thing that data players must consider is the purpose of the data project. Depending on the goal, the list of “must-haves” changes drastically.
So, let’s make an example out of the aforementioned “360-degree customer view” (or “single customer view”). What is the purpose of building such a thing? It is to stay relevant with the target customers. How do we go about doing that? Just collect anything and everything about them? If we are to “predict” their future behavior, or to estimate their propensities in order to pamper them through every channel that we get to use, one may think that we have to know absolutely everything about the customers.