5 Digital Intelligence Rules in the Age of Insights

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In this special guest feature, Dan Schoenbaum, CEO at Cooladata, outlines the 5 digital intelligence rules needed to guide you through the Age of Insights. Dan joins Cooladata with over 23 years of building, growing and leading high-growth SaaS companies. He joins Cooladata from Redbooth, a leader in the collaboration space. He led Redbooth from its inception to a company with over 3,000 customers and global licensing deals in addition to partnerships with Cisco, CA and Box. Prior to Redbooth, Dan was the COO and Chief Business Development Officer for Tripwire, a leader in the enterprise security market, where he helped triple revenues to $90M, file an S1 on the NASDAQ and sell the company. His service extends beyond the world of high-tech as well, to serving as a First Sergeant and as a sniper in the Israeli paratroopers.

We’ve seemingly been in the Age of Big Data for years. What you might not realize is that now is the Age of Insights.

Companies big and small have been compiling as much data as possible — but few truly have the means necessary to analyze that data. The disruptive powers of Big Data have become the norm, with the need for insights on the rise.

Simply having Big Data isn’t enough. To stand ahead of your competitors in these times, you need to be able to analyze and draw conclusions from that data. As some experts have said, “Businesses are drowning in data, but starving for insights.”

If you want to stand out among others, now you need systems of insights that will empower you to focus on the customer. This will enable you to create meaningful touch points of personalized customer engagements.

Let’s address the 5 digital intelligence rules needed to guide you through the Age of Insights:

Insights for Digital Disruption

Just like with the endless supply of big data, businesses and mobile apps have a massive selection of web and mobile analytics to choose from.

But having the right tools still just isn’t enough. Studies are showing that satisfaction with analytics is on the decline, even though investment in analytics tools continues to grow. Simply put: we’re spending more and getting less for our money.

The reason why companies are so dissatisfied with their analytics tools is because they rely on sampled data and limited data sources — not even taking advantage of all Big Data has to offer. With this, companies are only receiving fragments of insights.

The solution is a true system of insights that fuel the digital ecosystem. We can’t continue to rely on analytics that serve as mere aggregators of data. Businesses today need proper digital intelligence that takes into account all of the data they’ve been gathering.

Time Series Analysis, Not Snapshots

When you just have a snapshot of data, you’re not able to make a decision based on the true picture. A snapshot just looks at a segment of data at one moment in time.

If you want to truly understand your customers’ behavior, you need to analyze a larger sample size of data. To accomplish this, customer behavior insights need to come from time series analysis, examining the complete sequence of actions that led to a customers a decision, as well as what happened afterward.

Often, taking a deep dive into the anomalies in the customer journey can deliver the insights you need to stand out among the competition and find new ways to move forward.

Smart Digital Intelligence

The business intelligence many companies rely on today isn’t very intuitive. To get insights from BI systems, an analyst will query 600 lines of SQL, perform many joins of tables and spend hours waiting for results.

The problem? By the time those results are generated, they’re probably already irrelevant.

There’s a better way to get the necessary insights. By using the new generation of true digital intelligence solutions, paired with the right data analysis tools such as reporting wizards and query shortcuts, businesses can prepare customized reports that show real-time insights.

A Single Source of Truth

Forward-thinking businesses need the ability to synchronize data from many sources, inspect that data as a whole and come up with insights based on this holistic view.

By accommodating server-side sessionization and integrating a complex unified identities mechanism, you can achieve the holy grail of customer data: cross-platform, cross-device, cross-channel user centricity.

Taking the granular focus of user behavior in mind, companies can learn more about what they need to do to optimize the customer’s journey.

Big Data is Only the Beginning

Though the focus on Big Data is shifting to insights, it’s still an important piece of the puzzle. Nearly every company has Big Data or is at least starting to generate more and more figures pertaining to their performance.

What needs to end is the fallacy that Big Data alone is what you need to prevail. In and of itself, Big Data is just piles of data. Now, we need to move into the Age of Insights, where meaningful conclusions can be derived from all that data.

By adding systems of insights, your business can stand out among the rest and carve its path toward dominance.

 

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