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3.7: Becoming a data led organisation

  • Page ID
    36840
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    The journey to becoming a data-led organisation is not an easy one, particularly for an already established business. Where would this change happen in how data, and its impact on the customer, is viewed?

    A data-driven business needs to involve people who obsess about data and cultivate an organisational culture that puts data and the customer first. The organisational design that enables this data-first approach would look something like this:

    clipboard_e6d87ef1de94f232e091111f064fbb2cd.png
    Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): A variation of the organisational design required to combine a focus on data and customer to build a relevant customer experience

    The journey should follow certain steps. These steps don’t all have to happen in the same order, but they do tend to focus on three different areas.

    Internal preparation

    First, you will need to internally prepare your organisation for a data-first, customerdriven view. The very first thing your organisation needs to do is understand and validate the financial and emotional investment the company must make to deliver this new approach (investment in technology, hardware, people, and change management). Then, you will have to:

    • Gather and analyse collective data to discover how and where your customers are connected (what channels and with what devices).
    • Appoint a cross-functional team to champion the Customer Experience strategy. This requires customer officers to evaluate customer experience and data officers who can assess your current back-end architecture and data storage. Remember, you need the right infrastructure to support dynamic data storage and use.
    • Architect the best toolset that supports your existing platforms to drive and support the changing customer experience. Remember to consider the kind of reporting you’ll need to do.
    • Consider the three components of trust – security, privacy, and transparency – and put people and processes in place to monitor this.

    Customer focus

    Second, your organisation will need to start moving toward actually analysing the customer and making their experience with your brand a better one. This means you need to:

    • Identify granular segments within your user base.
    • Update your consumer engagement processes and governance strategy accordingly.
    • Shift toward a world where every customer has a unique view of your product.
    • Start mapping relevant user journeys that leverage new channels of access to the consumer.
    • Use the collective data to map the journey.
    • Consider customer touchpoints and feedback loops.
    • Use the data in part of the feedback loop to map the change in the customer journey.

    External evaluation

    Finally, you need to keep an eye on what is happening outside your business that could have an impact on it. This means you should:

    • Evaluate competitors for their use of data influencing their personalisation strategies.
    • Identify emerging technologies that could drive your incremental/disruptive innovation strategy.

    A focus on data will impact and improve every aspect of your organisation, not only your marketing efforts, so start your journey now.


    This page titled 3.7: Becoming a data led organisation is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Rob Stokes via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.