Tag Archives: Big data

March 20, 2014 · 8:41 am

Data, Data Everywhere (Part 2)

Yesterday I discussed finding a couple of articles that didn’t make sense in the context of one another.

Image representing IBM as depicted in CrunchBase

Image via CrunchBase

The first was about a lack of data from digital media and how that medium needs to be more accountable.  Today’s article is about a study conducted by IBM.  As they said in their release:

The study, entitled “Stepping up to the challenge: How CMOs can start to close the aspirational gap,” is based on findings from face-to-face conversations with more than 500 CMOs from 56 countries and 19 industries worldwide. Conducted by IBM’s Institute for Business Value (IBV), the study reveals that 94 percent of CMOs believe advanced analytics will play a significant role in helping them reach their goals. However, an increased number of CMOs say their organizations are underprepared to capitalize on the data explosion – 82 percent compared to 71 percent three years before.

In other words, there is already too much information crossing the desks of the folks in marketing and the people in charge can’t make sense of what they have now.  It’s only going to get worse as the marketing information generated from mobile and social continue to grow.  Is digital media not accountable as claimed by the head of the ANA or is it TOO accountable and overwhelming as found by this study?

These two pieces taken together point out the reality of marketing these days.  We are awash in an ocean of data and it’s no longer about “do we have the information?” but “can we find the right information among all of the data we have?”  I’ve had clients who told me they had little transparency into what was going on with their customers but because they didn’t have a thorough understanding of data systems they already had in place – web analytics, social media measures, etc. – they were wrong.

The claim that digital isn’t accountable and lacks data is a negotiating position, similar in my mind to the dance that goes on each year before the networks begin to sell in their upfront season.  If anything, the fault with digital is that it’s still relatively new and old ways of thinking about media and data are changing (or should be).  So yes, to paraphrase the Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, there’s data data everywhere but I think there’s plenty to drink. Maybe even too much. What’s your take?

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August 7, 2012 · 10:43 am

Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For

U2 provides the succinct summary this morning of some research published by the folks at Lynchpin and Econsultancy.

English: The content of tweets on Twitter, bas...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Those two concerns examined how companies are using and learning from analytics and their Online Measurement and Strategy Report brings us back to a theme we’ve explored previously here on the screed.  In brief, companies are finding out more and learning less.  What I mean, and what the report shows, is that companies have more data than ever about consumer behavior and yet because of a number of factors they find the data less useful and without context.

Here are a few findings:

A majority of marketers worldwide say that less than half of all the analytics data they collect is actually useful for decision-making. Just one in 10 companies thought a strong majority of analytics data was helpful, and less than a third said somewhere between half and three-quarters of all data was useful.

While finding the right staff has been also highlighted as a limiting factor in the report, one other issue that emerges after looking into the responses is that organizational issues are another common frustration.  These demonstrate themselves in ways such as :

There is one team in charge of web analytics – not a marketing team – so for the marketing colleagues it is a fight to try to extract data from the analytics team.

Huge and siloed organisations, complexity of aged infrastructure and sites, legal policies

Getting management agreement on goals.

Education of senior management in understanding the benefit of an integrated digital performance management process.

Once again we find that a lot of data isn’t necessarily a lot of information.  For that to appear we need to formulate actionable business questions that are concerns of as many stakeholders as we can involve and then seek out the appropriate data to answer them.  The more we know the less we understand, apparently, and many businesses still haven’t found what they’re looking for despite drowning in data.   I think that’s kind of amazing and a bit sad.  What do you think?

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March 22, 2012 · 10:45 am

Me Or Your Own Eyes?

You’ve probably heard some version of the 18th century joke about a wife who, caught by her husband in bed with a lover, denies the obvious and adds: ‘Whom do you believe, your eyes or my words?’ The Marx Brothers used a variant of it in Duck Soup when Chico, dressed up as Groucho, asks “who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?” Obviously people believed their own eyes since the quote is usually attributed to Groucho.

Groucho Marx

Groucho Marx (Image via RottenTomatoes.com)

I thought of that quote as I was trying to explain a report to someone. They kept telling me the same story about what was going on in their business even though the data was saying something quite different.  Who was I going to believe: them or my own eyes?  Or my own data?

One of the big trends these days is a discussion of “big data.”  In a nutshell, almost everything we do these days in business generates data, and most of the managers I know are drowning in the stuff.  Despite that, most of the companies in which these managers work are not what I’d call a data-driven culture.  In fact, they suffer from the same issue mentioned above.  The will often fit the data to the story instead of letting the data help them solve the questions raided in the telling.  McKinsey stated in one of their reports that:

By 2018, the United States alone could face a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 people with deep analytical skills as well as 1.5 million managers and analysts with the know-how to use the analysis of big data to make effective decisions.

What’s needed is change management with a goal of developing a data-driven culture. Maybe that’s too strong – how about a culture in which data isn’t subordinated to the role of being used selectively to reinforce or justify bad decision-making?  At some point, people have to learn to trust their own eyes – the data they see – and not the stories they hear.  That’s what I think – you?

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