Netrics HD

I came across this recent article in BtoB Magazine

BtoB Magazine: “Marketers: Clean customer data a priority in 2008”
By Carol Krol
March 17, 2008

It’s great to see that simply collecting customer data is no longer good enough – the data needs to be usable to benefit the business.

Refining customer data quality and access to customer data have emerged as two of the top marketing investment priorities of b-to-b CMOs this year. Half of b-to-b marketers plan to put more resources against creating marketing databases, cleaning up customer data, improving sales force automation and CRM integration, according to Forrester Research in its “B2B CMO Investment Priorities for 2008” report.

The article references a recent Forrester Research report, a survey released by Alterian, and quotes several marketing executives at large well-known enterprises – all agree that something must be done. Dealing with imperfect customer data is now a top priority for 2008. Finally!

Now that we all agree on the problem, the question is how should this problem be solved? Of course, it’s often a multi-facetted, cross-organizational solution that will always involve Technology, Process, and People (TPP). But all three components of TPP depend on each other – and any one of the three can be the weak link in the chain.

But in most cases, the weakest link is Technology – which is why more People are thrown at a problem, which in turn requires more Process to keep everyone working together efficiently. Then you get the snowball effect and the solution grows out of control and takes on a life (and expense) of its own.

So, the argument is if we can improve the core Technology, then we can reduce the People part and streamline the Process part as well. The TPP solution will stay nicely under control and perform as it’s expected to perform – while keeping costs in check.

Which leads to this wonderful quote from the article:

“Data always degrade, get dirty, become obsolete or old. You need a department of 20 people like Adrian Monk [from the TV show “Monk”] who live to keep things organized.”

Brett Butler
Director of Global Sales and Marketing Practices, Lexmark International

Yes, I agree whole-heartedly – the nature of customer data (in fact, almost all database data) is that it is (1) never perfect and (2) constantly changing in ways that change.

But needing a department of twenty Adrian Monks? This is the result of Technology failing to delivery and thus requiring the Monk department to compensate.

So I’m curious, what is your organization’s Monk Factor?

The point is that with Technology pulling its weight, the Monk Factor can be very low – but it’ll never be zero. Moreover, the People part shouldn’t require that everyone have those extra-special Monk skills. After all, Adrian Monk is a genius – you can’t build a successful solution to a business problem if you require twenty Monks here and twenty Monks there… the solution won’t scale and neither will your organization. And by the way, don’t expect your Adrian Monks to complete Sisyphean Tasks either!

Use your Monks strategically and leverage the heck out of them – that approach will bring the most benefit to your organization.

The right innovative Technology can help you do just that.