Debra Zahay-Blatz

The three steps to 'shareability,' sharing customer information within the firm

Multichannel marketing means being able to deploy not only campaigns but content across channels in an integrated fashion.

It is recognized that to communicate effectively across channels, customer information must be also shared effectively within the organization.

Data sharing was the a topic at Econsultancy.com's recent Big Data Roundtable in London in February. What is less well-known and understood is how to get to a shared data repository as an organization.

This blog post shares some of our research results as to how to achieve shared data in the corporation.

Why doesn’t everyone do Big Data?

There was a lively discussion at Digital Cream in Chicago on October 24 during the multichannel session about why EVERYONE doesn’t leap on bandwagon and develop a customer database that can be used meaningfully for lead nurturing, customer acquisition and retention.

One of the participants at Digital Cream noted that businesses invest where they can get a return for their dollar and those businesses making these investments in a customer database must see the returns. However large the benefits of customer information systems (CIS), it is true that other factors contribute to profitability.

For example, depending on how good your company is at New Product Development (NPD), 25 to 49% of company profits typically come from new product development efforts. Winning new products typically pay off very quickly and their average ROI is over 96%. So a CIS project, with its long development and implementation cycle, must compete for company resources and attention.