“Enterprise Data Mashup” is the new mantra when analyzing a customers complete experience with your brand.
According to a new Gartner Inc. study, customer experience is now a top 10 priority for CIOs. 
Still, in order for companies to become more customer-centric, they need to gather and act on the full range of information that customers share across the multiple channels they use to interact with companies, including web, mobile, social, chat, email, and voice.
Data silos constrain an organization’s agility, place limits on efficiency, and prevent decision makers from gaining a 360-degree view of customers, including their behaviors, needs, and attitudes According to research conducted by Kyield, data silos result in $1.2 billion in preventable costs for the pharmaceutical industry and more than $100 billion in lost opportunities annually for the federal government.
Of course, there’s a distinct difference between simply collating data streams from different channels and sources and ensuring that the right mix of information is being collected to enable decision makers to gain real-time views of customer and market trends.
Part of the challenge faced by many companies is the need to address data latency to ensure that the most timely and important information is being blended together so that decision makers don’t miss out on new market opportunities as they arise.
A great starting point for achieving data integration begins at the C-level. In order for companies to successfully share and blend meaningful data from a variety of sources, data integration efforts need to be championed by a senior executive who is able to effectively communicate and extol the benefits for doing so.
This is different than someone who might be labeled a “data champion” – typically an IT professional who is knowledgeable about the business and can be positioned as an effective liaison to business leaders.
Line of business and functional leaders are often reluctant to share customer data housed by their divisions with other parts of the business. That’s why it’s critical for a senior corporate executive (CEO, COO) to stand behind the benefits of data integration. This includes demonstrating the business benefits that can occur such as small wins that reflect an uplift in cross-sell or upsell opportunities or other business performance gains.
The right BI and analytics tools can make it a lot easier for companies to create an Enterprise Data Mashup, thus minimizing the amount of effort needed to install APIs or middleware between various data systems.
It’s the companies that break through the organizational boundaries that keep them from acting on all the available data that will ultimately succeed.
Next steps:
- Check out our complimentary “5-Minute Guide to Business Analytics” to learn how user-driven “analytic” or “data discovery” technologies help business and technology users more quickly uncover insights and speed action.
- See how Spotfire version 4.5 empowers users to discover actionable insights hidden in big data and unstructured information in our on-demand webcast, “What’s New with Spotfire 4.5.”
