Data is the new Oil — but are we making the most of it?

In 2006, Clive Humby (the British mathematician, entrepreneur, expert in data science and customer-centric business strategies — and architect of Tesco’s Clubcard) coined the phrase “Data is the new oil”. He elaborated by saying that, like oil, data is “valuable, but if unrefined it cannot really be used. It has to be changed into gas, plastic, chemicals, etc. to create a valuable entity that drives profitable activity; so must data be broken down, analyzed for it to have value.”

Unfortunately, while the 2–3 market leaders across industries have gained a competitive edge by drilling more oil (read: capturing more data), refining it (read: master data management and other data quality initiatives) and then processing and distributing it to drive profits (read: using data to identify and solve business problems, deliver profits and save costs), there are still laggards in industries like Auto, Utilities, Healthcare, Manufacturing and other such sectors that are yet to make significant progress despite making tangible investments.

In fact, even in other sectors like Retail and Banking where there has been progress, the companies are doing well on the drilling and refining, but are not able to use the oil or are drilling and using some oil, but leaving lot of opportunities on the drilling and processing side.

In Convergytics’ Data and Analytics Leadership Series, we’ll go into each sector and identify how oil (Data) can be drilled, refined and used to solve challenges faced by companies in those sectors, along with some success-stories of how we’ve delivered value to our clients by collaborating on their data initiatives. Hopefully, this will serve as food-for-thought for future data, BI and analytics initiatives.

Three major areas where value can be unearthed (pun intended) are:

1. Sales

2. Marketing

3. Production

Driving B2B Sales Leadership using Data

Whether it is a FMCG company selling their products to end-customers through distributors, or a diversified industrial, automotive, chemical or even a pharmaceutical company selling their products through intermediaries, the themes around leveraging data more effectively are the same.

I’m not sure whether Mark Twain said that. Sounds a little like what Abe Lincoln certainly did not say, i.e. “Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet!” But the essential point is that what one will do with data should be established before data is collected! It all starts with understanding what the underlying challenges are, so that your strategy can be developed to counter them.

Here are some typical challenges in the words of our customers — and what we have said:

· “I am not able to accurately capture end-customer sales data”:
While this is a challenge, there are several innovative solutions to improve secondary sales data coverage.

· “My sales team is not entering the data accurately and hence the data is not reliable”.
We can understand these data issues and suggest a few simple changes to your CRM system can significantly improve the usability of sales data.

· “I don’t have enough visibility into my competitors and how they are doing”.
Let us build a competitor monitoring and analytics solution that will give you a significant edge over your competitors.

· “How can I make sure I do not leave money on the table with the pricing that my sales team is leading with and closing on (pricing for distributors)”.
Our Pricing Optimizer will help your sales teams understand what drives your customers’ buying decisions and will recommend the best price for each customer. This will improve your profitability and market share by defining optimal prices and pricing strategy.

Marketing-led Brand and Sales Transformation

Marketing (especially Digital-driven marketing) has always not been a top priority for industries like Auto, Utilities, Pharma, Chemicals and Manufacturing. This has meant that companies have gone ahead with an outdated website (possibly built 8–10 years ago), with one lone-ranger monitoring incoming inquiries and leads, and passing them onto the sales team by e-mail. This is something that needs to change. Digital Analytics driven marketing and modernizing the way sales and marketing work collaboratively will easily deliver a 10–20X RoI. Yup, that is 10–20X.

Here are 5 imperatives that we can drive for you:

1. Build a modern website and one or more mobile apps that reflect your brand(s) and deliver much more than sales.
(a.k.a. Website and App Modernization)

2. Setup tracking of your website and apps data (clickstream) so that you can monitor activity and drive better decisions in improving it.
(a.k.a. Digital Analytics Audit and Tag Implementation)

3. Create a set of automated and well-planned reports that reflect progress being made as you move forward in this journey.
(a.k.a. Dashboarding and KPI development)

4. Work with your sales and marketing teams to create marketing-led sales campaigns that include brand-focussed and events-focussed digital campaigns, with campaigns focused on reactivation and existing customer re-engagement.
(a.k.a. CRM / Campaign Analytics)

5. Work with your Sales Leadership to improve work-flow of your sales operations, so that the sales team is more productive and can improve Lead-to-Conversion ratio and the Size of the Orders they bring in
(a.k.a. Cross-Sell, Route-Planning, Workflow Automation)

Digital Transformation of the Production/Shop Floor

The assembly line of the late 90s has improved for sure — and there are innovations that have significantly improved productivity in the factory. The next big surge in productivity will come from leveraging data.

A lot of the recent work that we have done on analytics in manufacturing, has come from using sensor data to drive better decisions. Key use-cases are:

· Monitoring failures of assembly line and setting alerts to key stakeholders

· Proactive alerts on likely failures of key stress points in the assembly line

· Preventive maintenance alert solutions

In Conclusion,

Fundamentally, we are moving towards less subjectivity and more objectivity coming from data driven decision making models. This helps companies work towards key business goals by leveraging verified, analyzed data rather than merely shooting in the dark. Never forget,

In the next few posts, we will go into greater details in these and other areas and share some success-stories that can perhaps illuminate your data and analytics journey. Please follow me on Medium or connect/follow me on LinkedIn to stay updated.

Remember, that there is only so much that can be done with poor quality, inconsistent and spurious data, before this happens! 😊

Here is what we are thinking of, for the next few posts in our Data and Analytics Leadership Series.

1. How can Competitor Analysis Data led Analytics Solutions give you the edge?

2. Change the way data is accessed through Enterprise BI Transformations

3. Digital and Marketing Analytics led Website Modernization

Do share your feedback on this and we’d be happy to cover more.

Author Profile:

Randhir Hebbar is an entrepreneur and one of the founders of Convergytics — Asia’s leading analytics brand (as per UK based Global Brands Magazine). Randhir heads Data, Digital, BI and Products at Convergytics and manages several key accounts. He has consulted with dozens of leading Fortune 500 brands over the past 20 years.