Data and Analytics Maturity: The Foundation for Getting Digital Transformation Right!

By Barton Goldenberg and Mike Bender

The amount of data an organization has available to understand their customer is immense. Some organizations are mastering their data and others are overwhelmed by the volume.

Today, more than 11 billion connected devices are producing eight zettabytes of data per year. The amount of data only grows with billions of phones, sensors, payment systems, and other Internet of Things (IoT) devices added every day. By 2025, forecasts call for 80 billion devices producing a staggering 180 zettabytes of data. The industry leaders like Amazon, Google, American Express, Ford, and Capital One were early adopters and have used data and analytics to gain a competitive advantage. Failure to have a strong data and analytics program means opening a window for your competition to have a better understanding of your customers, more effective employees, and higher rates of new customer acquisition, retention, and loyalty.

The Linkage Between Data & Analytics Maturity and Digital Transformation

There is strong linkage between the maturity of your data & analytics program and your organization’s ability to get digital transformation right. While digital transformation requires excellence in other areas of focus including CRM, Digital Customer Communities, Customer Engagement, and Emerging Technologies, a strong data & analytics program is at the foundation of a powerful digital transformation roadmap.

Data-driven decision-making has become a requirement for effective Digital Transformation. The most successful companies perpetually data mine information contained in their holistic customer profiles to gain customer insights.

These industry leaders and transformers leverage data analytics processes and tools to enhance customer profiling and segmentation.   By enhancing customer profiles and segmentation these companies achieve insights into customer lifecycles and journey maps, they target lead scoring and routing, and achieve better forecasting and cross selling. In addition they are able to model customer behaviors for more effective marketing campaigns.

Digital Transformation Framework

Companies that have been successful in their Digital Transformation efforts have based these efforts on an integrated framework whereby data used in individual customer-facing projects connect and integrate with data utilized by other customer-facing projects. For example, these companies leverage Data & Analytics as a foundational platform to analyze and provide insights coming from multiple customer engagement channels including Digital Customer Communities, CRM, Customer Engagement activities and elsewhere. These companies leverage Customer Journey Mapping and Customer Experience surveys to feed the holistic customer profiles. They leverage Emerging Technologies like AI, IoT, AR to drive a deeper understanding or customer needs and to provide best ‘next action step’ for each client.

The picture below pulls together the components of an effective Digital Transformation strategy. Successful companies tackle Digital Transformation by implementing these components in bite-size chunks, supported by a long-term roadmap that focuses as much on people and process issues as technology.

The result of a successful Digital Transformation strategy? More satisfied, engaged and loyal customers who purchase and then advocate for your company’s products and services, which provides a sustainable competitive differentiation that companies like Amazon, Airbnb and Uber have leverage to initially disrupt well established industries, and then dominate them..

If your goal is to thrive in today’s digital deluge, now is the time to make Data & Analytics part of your company’s DNA and core business strategy.

For more than 30 years, ISM has worked closely with world-class B2B and B2C companies like Giorgio Armani, Jaguar Land Rover, Zumba Fitness, Kraft Foods, Pacific Life and others on Data & Analytics and customer intelligence projects. We would enjoy the opportunity to work with your organization to create and deliver Data & Analytics excellence. To learn more, consider attending ISM’s February 19^th webinar titled “How to Use Data Analytics to Become an Industry Disruptor” (https://ismguide.com/thought-leadership/webinar-archive/) and visiting the ISM website: https://ismguide.com/integrated-strategies-3/big-data-analytics/.