Multi-Channel Commerce & Retailing

based upon earlier work by Thomas C. Redman “Data Driven: Profiting from your most important business asset”, Harvard Business Press 2008.  http://www.teradata.com/tdmo/v08n04/Viewpoints/EnterpriseView/TenHabits.aspx

In his role as a ‘Data Doc’ he considers the fundamentals which sit behind the latest web technologies and stresses their universal appeal. I will publish this ‘top 10’ and wonder how many entries leave you nodding in agreement, or shaking your head at how your organisation is unable to meet the requirement even though it is an obvious foundation for success.

Top 10 habits of enterprises with the best data quality:

1)      Customer Focus

2)      Process Management

3)      Supplier Management

4)      Measurement

5)      Continuous Improvement

6)      Control

7)      Targets for Improvement

8)      Clear Management Accountability

9)      Managing soft issues

10)   Broad, senior group leadership

Now none of these 10 will appear even the slightest bit contentious. But how would you set about proving them? What measures would you put in place and how would you measure ROI?

Certainly they all seem to come back to a simple maxim, “if you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it”. The irony is, getting the right data from the right place at the right time for the right perspective can be as difficult as proving who to attribute this business maxim to. I thought it was Peter Drucker but would also accept:

·         W. Edwards Deming with regard to quality

·         Robert Kaplan, the founder of the BSC

·         Gordon Baskerville's famous forest management dictum

·         George Webster

·         Andy Grove at Intel

·         T. TRAVERS WALTRIP

·         Peter Drucker

·         Sugrue

·         Frederick W. Smith, founder of Federal Express.

 

See how confusing getting the right metrics for a simple piece of data can be? As an aside I would like to list the winner of this attribute contest,….Galileo! It comes from a remark attributed to him, 'Count what is countable, measure what is measurable. What is not measurable, make measurable'."

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=139473

[J Does that make Galileo the first Business Consultant? What would his fees be in 1630s anyway? In any case, the penalty for a producing a result the Customer was not ready to hear was a little more taxing in those days, as I recall on a project deliverable in 1632, “he was tried by the Inquisition, found "vehemently suspect of heresy," forced to recant, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest. Ouch.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei ]
A little diversion but the point about being careful how and what you measure is a potent one. As Kevin Hillstrom of ‘MineThatData’ suggests when measuring campaign effectiveness, (“Measuring Campaign Results: Short-Term or Long-Term Measurement?”
http://www.allaboutroimag.com/blog/measuring-campaign-results-short-term-long-term-measurement-301267.html )
“..When you step back and measure marketing effectiveness over time instead of at a campaign level, you obtain different results. When you choose to use a different set of metrics, you obtain a different ROI.”
His example was to look at customers panels consisting of people who had not spent in the last 6 months who were either offered (or not) 20% off with $100 spent. At the end of six months trial, the results suggested Customers in the first panel, the one eligible for promotions, spent $50 apiece on average. The second panel, not eligible for any promotions, spent the same amount per customer.
Yet the data seemed to support them when the promotion was first launched. “We plotted demand on a graph and noticed spikes every time we offered a promotion.” So better to stick to the basics, but measure things over time with varied formats to ‘prove’ what you know to be true.