Got an interesting perspective on CRM analytics from Gareth Herschel of Gartner today (I am at the Teradata Partners conference) that I thought meshed really well with some of the EDM concepts I have been discussing elsewhere on this blog. He was discussing real-time or right-time analytics in a CRM context. In particular there were three things he said that resonated with me:
- What's critical is the time it takes you to act not the time it takes to analyze
In other words, it does not matter if you have real-time data and real-time analysis tools if the time it takes to persuade others of the analysis and the time it takes to implement is still measured in weeks or months. It matters how long it takes you from when you could know something to when you do, in fact, change your behavior based on it. Optimizing this decision process is a key element of Enterprise Decision Management. - There is a gap between the data we have, how much we can analyze and how much analysis we can act on.
The amount of customer data the typical company has is growing exponentially. There is a growing gap between this data volume and the volume we can usefully analyze. In addition there is a growing gap, and one that is growing faster, between how much we can analyze and how much we can execute on. The use of modern analysis tools in an EDM framework is an attempt to address the first gap while embedding these analytics into agile business rules-based systems is key to the second gap. EDM again. - Continuous improvement is the key competitive advantage.
Several times Gareth discussed the advantages companies, from the Rothschilds in the Napoleonic era to modern times, have gained from better decision-making. In each case it was not just the time to get new decisions in place based on that new data that gave long term competitive advantage. It was the decision cycle-time - how fast they could continually improve those decisions and business practices - that drove advantage. EDM is about putting in place an infrastructure that lets you keep your decision cycle shorter than your competitors.
Look for more on this when I have time.
