Page 19 - 10052 WORSH Marketor Issue 79.indd

BUSINESS LECTURE THREE:

Richard Christou
How to manage your data Master

The third business lecture was given by Roger Camrass. Roger is a visiting professor at the University of Surrey
and the UK director of CIONET, Europe’s largest CIO community. A pioneer of today’s Internet, and partner for
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the intersection between technology and management practice for some 50 of the Fortune 500 companies.

The real issue to focus on – exploiting shape of mobile phones, wearable 1HWÁL[ LV WRGD\ WKH QXPEHU RQH YLGHR
data devices like smart watches, Fitbits and on demand company, even though it
Roger began by asking whether, as other health monitors. Amazon is more has fewer than 25% of Amazon’s titles.
marketers, we are preoccupied with interested in the customer information This is because its philosophy of test
the right issues about our data. created through your use of Alexa than and learn, basing decisions on
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0RVW FRPSDQLHV WRGD\ DUH SUH GHYLFH LQ WKH ÀUVW SODFH ,Q ÀYH \HDUV objective information about what its
occupied with the pressing matters of your fridge will know your dietary and customers want to view, holds
Compliance, Cyber Security and shopping habits and the cost of the customer loyalty. For instance, its hit
Data Protection, but meanwhile fridge will be negligible compared to production “The Crown” was created
digital giants such as Amazon and the value of that data. Taking the based primarily upon customer
Google continue to exploit customer connected car, companies now have
data to disrupt virtually every sector. tremendous amounts of information on feedback.
How can more traditional companies performance and use of their cars, not Zara specialises in “Fast Fashion”,
take a proactive stance to marshal to mention our driving habits. acting with speed and agility based
their key asset – data? What are the RQ GDWD GULYHQ GHFLVLRQ PDNLQJ ,WV
obstacles, and how might best To survive in this changing environment designers access data from across
practice take them forward? there needs to be a corresponding
shift in our business model. In the the supply chain, including customer
Changing from an analogue to a analogue world we concentrated on data from its 2,200 stores in 93
digital business model
optimising performance by focusing countries. Relying on this data they
In just the last two years we have seen RQ RSHUDWLRQDO HIÀFLHQF\ WKH FRUUHFW can design and bring to market new
an explosion of data from every source scope and scale for the particular products every week to satisfy
– two billion mobile phones, 30 billion business and cost reduction. In the changing customer demand.
connected machines. But according digital world we need to focus on
WR D UHFHQW 0F.LQVH\ UHSRUW RQO\ speed and agility, development of Challenges in moving to the data-
of this core asset is being exploited. products and services through driven organisation
There are good reasons why we have continuous experimentation and Roger admitted that he was painting
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including legacy systems, cultures, and offerings, right down to the level of the DQ LGHDOLVHG SLFWXUH RI WKH GDWD
lack of funding. individual. driven organisation. There are clearly
many challenges for businesses to
Roger described the problem as Data-driven decision making
emanating from a tectonic shift in the The new technology has created the move towards the new model. He
business environment: from analogue possibility of a paradigm shift in the summed up the business challenges
towards a digital business model. This way businesses make decisions, from relating to data management as
is resulting in a change of emphasis decisions based on management follows:
from:
intuition or judgement to those based • Gaining deeper insights into
• Hardware to software (e.g. the RQ GDWD GULYHQ LQVLJKWV $FFHVV LQ WKH internal and external data
connected car) digital word to objective facts makes • Integrating a growing number of
• Products to service (e.g. from GDWD GULYHQ GHFLVLRQV SRVVLEOH LI ZH WKLUG SDUWLHV HFR V\VWHPV
scanners to digital scanned have the courage to make them
images) despite our subjective ‡ 3URFHVVLQJ GDWD LQ QHDU UHDO WLPH
• Transactions to lifetime customer preconceptions about what the • Responding to regulatory and
value (from ownership to access) answer should be, or what we would compliance initiatives
prefer it to be.
The driver of the transition from Conclusion
analogue to digital can be summed Finally, the speed with which data
up in the principle that information (now more than 80% unstructured) He concluded by emphasising that,
complements hardware. Whereas can be collected and analysed DV ZLWK WKH DGYHQW RI SXEOLF FORXG
previously we dealt with dumb makes it not only possible but also based services in 2008/9, the next
physical assets, the addition of necessary to reduce decision decade of data management will
software results in intelligent, timescales from weeks or months to intensify the gap between winners
connected hardware devices hours and sometimes minutes. and losers. No time should be lost now
capable of generating genuine All these trends are leading towards in elevating this subject to the Board.
customer intimacy – responding to the WKH GDWD GULYHQ RUJDQLVDWLRQ 7KH
individual customer’s context. The organisations which change and You can read full notes on Roger’s
device becomes of less value and adapt to the new environment will lecture and some further comments
importance than the information itself. survive and prosper. Those who fail to on it from me in my Master’s Blog Two,
This can be seen in the information do so will fall by the wayside. which is available on the Marketors’
generated through what has almost Roger gave two examples of such website at http://marketors.org in the
become throwaway hardware in the successes. News Section.

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