There are four forces that are driving the evolution of customer data. You feel them every day – as those forces are coming from the top down, bottom up, and even outside of your own walls. The convergence of these forces are, to some a liability, but we see opportunities in policy and liability, data ownership, customer insights, and marketing maturity. We recognized these 4 forces happened to be all interconnected. We simply decided to get in front of these changes – and give you the platform that enables it all (literally). Here are the four points of evolution:
1. Data Ownership
We, as retailers, have spent large volumes of time (and money) creating our own shopper data lakes. While part of these efforts imply data/infrastructure modernization, they are also answering the challenges associated with privacy, liability, and mitigating risk associated with 3rd parties visibility to our PII.
Why are we making these investments? It’s because customer data is an asset. Having a cleaned, scrubbed, analytically driven view of the shopper is fuel for every area of the business. That said, there is a special area of focus that we are all executing towards. It’s the point where the “360 view” of the shopper gives way to understanding of what the data means. Beyond 360 lives the opportunity of applied machine learning and the insights they deliver.
2. Operational Insights
Picture the smartest analyst your ever had. You know who they are. Now clone them, about 50 times. Operational Insights is that army of analysts, working 24/7/365 giving you the insights you need to support the hard decisions in your business.
This is the promise of machine learning. It requires data, but also requires “the machinery” and knowledge to transition “Insights” from project to product. This is the “operational” aspect of insights; enabling them to move beyond the buzz, delivering tangible value to your teams – finance, merchandising and marketing…hey, speaking of which.
3. Marketing Maturity
We rarely (if ever) design and execute programs aligned to strategic outcomes. What we mean by this is the acquisition of high quality traffic (foot and digital), it’s managing and expanding share of wallet, it’s using seasons as levers to drive specific lifecycle efforts, it’s the management of “churning” shoppers (vs. churned), and it’s winning back shoppers through crafting product level opportunities.
This is the goal (of OpenINSIGHTS) gen 1 operational insights. They are your next generation of triggered programs, fuel for new adhoc marketing programs, amazing fodder for co-op (if that’s your thing), and provide full database mobilization. Yes, you probably caught that this evolution even includes your existing marketing vendors, transitioning them from “marketing channels” into precision instruments for shopper lifecycle optimization.
4. Policy, Privacy & Liability
EU’s GDPR, California’s CCPA, New York’s (whatever acronym they land on) – it’s less about the policy, and far more about the signal. PII liability is about to become consequential, and it’s not merely the privacy and protection policy (and associated fines) we should be worried about.
For every shopper record you have, should their be a data breach, it equates to roughly $1.58. Now – this isn’t simply your data breach – this is a data breach of any vendor you work with who houses any level of PII. Being direct, if you have 7 different marketing vendors, each one housing (often times duplicative) PII – you can readily find yourself staring down the barrel of $300M in exposure.
This has added fuel for conversations around “data repatriation” – driving additional priority and clarity around the thoughts of data ownership (see below).
Why OpenINSIGHTS?
We are helping you get in front of change. Not in years but in months. We help you not merely have the technology in place to address this chance – but empower your team with knowledge on how to unlock and mobilize each level of value, from operationalizing your own models, to executing strategic marketing programs, to analyzing results through your own “single shopper view” – we don’t provide the technology for transformation – we provide the transformation itself.#DataModernization #Compliance
by Angel Morales
