This content relates to: DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
David Geisinger
Managing Director, Deloitte Digital
Today, we’re going to spend some time talking about an article written by Deloitte called Turning Data Into Your Growth Engine.
As an introduction, my name is David Geisinger. I’m a Managing Director and National Marketing Offering Leader for Experienced Management here at the firm. Our focus within our group is all around how do we transform data to make better decisions in order to orchestrate more personalized experiences to our clients, customers.
In the article, we talked about five key trends, but before I get into those trends, what I’d like to set up with is the fact that data has become a first class citizen in the primary asset of almost every business in the world today. How can that be true? One might argue that it’s the products, one might argue that it’s patents. Well, those are very important and the fact is that organizations can’t make money without them. But at the end of the day, if you don’t have a solid grasp on who your customer is, who they want, and treat them in a personalized fashion, you will not be successful in this next generation economy. That leads us to the trends.
Trend number one, in-housing of data. Historically, because data wasn’t necessarily treated or valued to the extent that it is today, the concept of owning your data was never really a thing. The fact of the matter is 94% of the organizations out there now are building skills that are focused around data and data management to bring that data in-house and treat it like the first class citizen that it is. The value of that, the value of owning your data is understanding who your customer is, being able to develop more relevant products, being able to market those products and services more effectively, and capture the experience that those folks that you serve are interested in most.
The second and equally as important trend that we’re seeing in the market is this concept of connecting disparate data or silos of data. So why do silos of data exist? Well, I’ve been in this business a long time, and I’ve seen channels just grow. Years ago, it used to be the concept of direct mail and telemarketing, then email came along, then social came along, and web and all of these other channels that have just created a massive amount of data, yet have been developed in systems that sit in silos. Additionally, many organizations have grown through mergers and acquisitions.
Imagine, you have two organizations that come together. Organization A had its own systems, organization B had its own systems. Now all of a sudden, you have two organizations across five channels, 10 possible systems across the two. This merger of businesses and of channels has created the need to bring all this data together to create what we call a single view of the customer. Sometimes you hear it referred to as C-360, Customer-360, etc, very important in order to drive accurate and relevant decisions. Decisions is probably the most important part of what you get from data. Data on its own is interesting. It’s how you look at that data that is important. The second trend is how do you turn that data into decisions, and bringing that data together and creating that single view is the first step. And first, most businesses right now are looking at how to consolidate that, and they’re using platforms such as customer data platforms, in order to optimize that for their activation, their segmentation, and their orchestration of messages to the right person, over the right channel at the right time.
The third trend is this concept of adaptability. So what I can tell you in life to be true is the one thing that’s always constant is change. Your needs as a consumer changes. What you need today, whether you’re starting your search for a job, or whether you’ve been in the workforce for 20 years may be very different than what you need next week or next month. An expectant mother may have different needs than a caregiver of an adult parent.
All of these ever-changing needs drive the way in which we personalize a need to adapt as individuals. Knowing your customer will allow businesses and organizations to be more relevant and effective in communicating to people where they are at that moment on their journey, which is very important. And we all know that our expectations as consumers has changed, whether that be because of COVID and the change in access and how we needed to receive things, whether that’s the influx and the increase in usage of things like Amazon Prime, whether that be just our connectedness through mobile devices, all of which organizations have had to adapt to the ever-changing consumer needs.
The fourth trend is around privacy. You need to — going back to one through three, you need to own people’s data, you need to make better decisions, and you need to adapt to change and be able to personalize, but you need to do so in a compliant, and private manner. No one wants their data or information spread all across the internet. Everyone wants to ensure that the information that they share with a brand is protected and that value exchange for my information is in the products, the services, and the personalized recommendations that we received. Not doing so in a private way has implications across the board for businesses, both the regulatory compliant and ultimately brand and financial level, but also has huge impact on our consumers in terms of their willingness to adopt new services or products or offerings that a business may have, etc. So huge important part of what we’re seeing in terms of trends.
And the last trend is this idea of comprehensive emotional intelligence. So let’s break down the three pieces. So first, let’s start with comprehensive. The idea behind comprehensive is end-to-end. Going back to the first couple of trends, you know, we talked about that 360 view, degree view. Comprehensive in this context means leveraging all of the available data to inform the decisions and the actions that we take.
Emotional. The emotional part is being able to connect with individuals on a personalized level, taking into account all of their needs, preferences, desires, wants that they’ve shared with you. And then the last part is this idea of intelligence, intelligence being the automation component. So how do we drive these sort of comprehensive on the channels across all the touchpoints, personalized message, but do so in a real time automated way that’s being delivered in both an effective and efficient manner? This last concept is sort of the pinnacle of being able to deliver again on that message of right time or right message to the right person at the right time. These are the things that we’re seeing in terms of big changes as it relates to turning your data into your growth engine. Hopefully, this was helpful for you today, and thank you very much.
Author:
David Geisinger
Managing Director, Deloitte Digital
https://www.deloittedigital.com/us/en/profiles/david-geisinger.html