Have you realized the full value of the most important resource in your company?
We operate in a fast-changing global business environment. As Mark Sievewright, President and CEO of TowerGroup says, we re all short on time now and the time deprivation means companies need to adapt to new and different ways of interacting. Staying ahead of the competition is only getting harder. The tipping point between success and failure is a razor s edge, the thinnest margin between winning and losing. Build a better widget. Our competitors can copy and improve on the widget before we even begin to capitalize on our edge.
We need to extract more value from what we have. How do we do this? Cutting costs is a double-edged sword. We need to be lean to succeed. But we need to invest to innovate, to evolve , to compete and to lead.
Klaus Schwab, President of the Davos World Economic Forum, observed recently, We have moved from a world where the big eat the small to a world where the fast eat the slow.
So, we need to change the rules. What is the only thing I have that my competitors do not have? What can I invest in that my competitors cannot replicate? The answer ”information.
Capitalize on the information you own about your customers, suppliers and partners ; it is the new value proposition for sustainable long- term growth.
Build a quieter washing machine, a smoother running car, a more comfortable plane or a faster package delivery service. A quality product is the table stakes. Our competitors can copy us. Virtually every industry is commoditizing. As much as we d like to believe that our product is superior and unique, the reality is that the differences between one product and a competitor s is a nuance a customer may not even discern. But if we use the information we have that our competitors don t have to enhance the value proposition for our customers, then we have something competitive for the long term.
Turn the tables for a minute. As a customer, is it worth something to us that a company knows us? Of course it is. If an airline remembers we like window seats and are vegetarian, it is of value. If our bank s ATM knows how much we habitually withdraw from which account, bypasses the standard string of questions and instead asks immediately if we would like the usual, it is of value. We don t go to the corner diner for the best food. We go because they know us and we don t even have to look at the menu. And customer does not just mean the end consumer; it is every partner or supplier a company deals with up and down the supply chain. If a company knows how many tubes of its toothpaste are selling at the stores it supplies and it can avoid stock-outs, that information is of value. If a company understands the maintenance cycle on its planes and their parts suppliers can coordinate more tightly with its needs, it is of value. The value of knowing our customers rolls up from the corner diner to the largest corporations.
We can already own and easily store the information we need. All the data is there for our collection. If we re not collecting and analyzing all the information we can, the competitive gap will only widen. In many industries data volume is doubling every eight to twelve months. The accretion of data increases exponentially every year. We are in an information age. Not only because of the Internet and the proliferation of media sources, but because every company is an information company now. The single fastest growing resource in every business is data. The wealth of information at our disposal grows every day. We can, in fact we have to, take advantage of its extraordinary value.
Five major forces drive this phenomenon :
Increased granularity in customer and transaction detail
Cumulative volume of historical data
Access to a broader range of demographic data
Addition of new clickstream data
Mergers and acquisitions