The times are changing and changing fast. Just like the data for these times. It comes fast. It changes often. This opens up new opportunities for savvy marketers. However, these kinds of opportunities need a structural and organizational mandate. These opportunities are big and the best competitors are capitalizing on them. What are the opportunities? Real-time automated customer interaction — customized customer interaction.  That’s a mouth full but very meaningful — real-time automated customized customer interaction.

This is the peak of the big data mountain value. Its a mountain and that’s why it takes serious organizational commitment. Building or moving mountains. First, you need the vision of where you want to go. Then you have to make the mountain. That involves getting your data assets and resources properly organized. Then you need an infrastructure of BI and reporting to glean low hanging fruit value and initiate best practices organization governance with the right information flows. Then you take this data further through exploration and analytics. Finally you apply those analytics into your automated, customized framework.

In the ideal world — you can piece it together like this. But more likely than not, you must work in the context of legacy structures. You must incrementally build. You must generate short term wins, rally the troops, generate greater commitment and build into a vision. This is where the rubber meets the road for most of the folks who dive into big data.

Its a constantly evolving world with new tools and technologies. Its a challenging world where intellectual resources and manpower is constrained. Its a world where going it alone has some serious risks — risks of doing it with less effectiveness but also risks of not getting it done at all.

This article, authored by me, at CMO.COM, motivates the need to be on this journey and to plan your partners carefully.

http://cmo.com/content/cmo-com/home/articles/2013/8/1/real_time_crm_to_max.html