My Top 5 Reads – Week 21
My 5 favourite articles on CRM, CX and digital transformation to read this week. On the agenda: B2B selling, video, CX, and retail…
5 data-driven principles for the Chief Data Officer to reshape CX strategy
“Customer data platforms (CDPs), data-driven projects, big data, analytics centers of excellence, digital transformation – popular concepts these days.”
Video Innovation Will Change Society
“Our forced reliance on video to connect personally and professionally during the COVID-19 pandemic has touched almost every industry: from music, fitness, and education to retail and healthcare. Terms like “Zoom party” and “telemedicine” have become colloquialisms.”
The New B2B Buying Process
“B2B buying has changed, and your sales strategy must, too”
Taking back control of your tech
“To win in customer experience, brands need to take back control of their technology. “
Is Virtual Shopping The Future Of Retail?
“With sales in excess of $6 trillion in 2019, the retail industry is one of the most important segments of the economy in the United States.”
About the Author
Didier Dessens
CRM and Digital Experience Advisory
2 thoughts on “My Top 5 Reads – Week 21”
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What do you think about big data in the future?
Hi!
Big data is a very interesting topic! I like it very much. It relates to so much more than just what most media speak about. It goes far beyond social media comments and likes. Are you studying or working on the topic?
First, let’s define big data. It is about unstructured data (as opposed to structured data). Known examples of big data are social media (voice, audio, text, image) as you may be aware, but big data is also increasingly produced by Internet-of-things, sensors, or Voice-over-IP devices for instance. Within organisations, emails, voice recordings, images, documentation in pdf or scanned archives represent a large part of big data firms already have internally. Technically, big data requires specific technology (Hadoop system, stream computing, and data warehouse as examples) to turn this unstructured data into structured data that can be used. For an organisation, big data represents a shift in data management.
Big data is actually not new. It has already been a reality for organisations for some years. I recall speaking to clients about big data and the IBM Big Data platform in 2014. A year later, I was managing a project combining both Artificial Intelligence (IBM Watson) with big data (scanned documentation) to address the European GDPR regulation. Today there exists a good number of big data implementations or pilots already in operations. Once the foundation technologies are in place, the usage spreads quickly across an organisation.
From a use case perspective, customer analytics (or customer experience) have been driving the initial big data initiatives within firms. Some insurance companies are using image recognition to automate the claim processes for instance. Others are automating the analysis and handling of emails received from customers with AI technology. Most of the initial efforts have been focused on gaining insights from the existing or new sources of data within organisations. I mean the ones they have internally like emails, letters, documentation, conversation recordings in call centers, etc. I strongly recommend to start with those internal data first.
In conclusion, I would recommend to an organisation willing to tap into big data to:
1. Start small
2. Focus on the big data sources internally first
3. Gain in maturity
4. Move progressively beyond the organisation walls and start listening to customers across all available interaction channels, including social media, to understand their reactions and learn from them.
I hope this is helpful! I’m planning to deep dive on the topic in a new post in the very near future, and would very like to know your thoughts!
Didier