The artist James Turrell once said, “Light is not so much something that reveals, as it is itself the revelation.” This is such a profound statement. Given the influx of data and the spotlight on leveraging Big Data, I immediately paralleled light with information. If we were to sit and think about it, information in the right context, at the right time, is indeed light.
Posts Tagged ‘information organization’
The Revelation of Data
Tuesday, February 21st, 2012Culture Must Meet Structure
Monday, November 14th, 2011Recently I heard a sales representative say, “We use a CRM and I didn’t visit it once to prepare for my sales meeting.” Interesting, yes? The sales rep went on to say that he would probably enter details about the meeting later in the CRM system—not to improve how he interacted with the customer but so that his manager could view the outcome of the meeting. Unfortunately, many organizations have Customer Facing Professionals (CFPs) with this mindset. A big piece in this equation is understanding what creates this mindset and solving it.
Big Data = Information Optimization
Monday, October 31st, 2011Everyone is talking about “big data” yet we each have a slightly different view of what it means and its impact. One thing we all can agree on is that we must devise strategies to handle and leverage the “Forty percent projected yearly growth of global data.”
One of the things I have heard is, “Well, we have a lot of information scattered throughout, so if we put everything we own in a single, distributed processing system like Hadoop—which is meant to house massive amount of information efficiently—we can start making sense of it.” I want to shake my head, “No, no, no!”
The Union of Structured and Unstructured Data
Monday, August 15th, 2011I had the distinct pleasure of speaking on a recent CXPA webinar “Gaining Customer Insights from Unstructured Data” along with CXPA co-founder and chair Bruce Temkin and Jason Schneider, vice president of enterprise sales at Clarabridge. One thing that resonated was Jason’s comment that “the marriage of structured and unstructured data is the point of ultimate action for an organization.”
I would have to concur. The challenge many businesses face today though is that the information needed to support customers is scattered throughout the company. Sales professionals, account management and customer support professionals have to log into 10 or more different applications trying to find information to help customers. According to Harris Interactive, even once information is found, 44% of customers claim that they received the wrong information. Added to this challenge is the phenomenal growth of unstructured data from internal blogs, content management systems, and customer survey responses as well as data captured outside the firewall from social media.
You are the Weakest Link
Monday, November 29th, 2010A few years ago at one time or another in jest with our best British accent we mouthed the words “you are the weakest link!” However, looking at Oracle’s research on “The Fragmented Supply Chain” I see little reason to jest. According to the study “fragmented supply chain information is costing British businesses up to £1.2 billion ($1.93 billion USD) in missed sales each year.” Nearly half [47%] of the supply chain executives surveyed said that poor information across their supply chain caused missed sales opportunities—weak link indeed.
First: An Organizational Rewire
Tuesday, June 15th, 2010We have all at some level come to the conclusion that we need information. We keep creating it, storing it and I dare say hoarding it because surely as soon as we would get rid of file X, we would then need that data. The New York Times recently posted an article, Hooked on Gadgets, and Paying a Mental Price, indicating that we have too much data, too much technology and multitasking is perhaps taking a toll on us mentally. However, Steven Yantis, a professor of brain sciences at John Hopkins University, claims that “the brain is wired to adapt.” This left me thinking, what are we doing to ensure that our organizations adapt?
How Organized is Your Sock Drawer?
Tuesday, March 30th, 2010There is a strong desire in human beings generally—and in IT folk particularly—to organize things. This is not bad. It’s good to keep your socks in your sock drawer and your cheese in the fridge. Putting cheese in your sock drawer, on the other hand, is probably not the best idea.
We can, however, take organization to an extreme. It may not be efficient, for example, to organize your sock drawer by brand, color, and fabric. For one thing, such organization probably won’t help you find the right socks any faster. You’re perfectly able to eyeball all the socks in your drawer just as they are and pick the right one. For another, the time you spend organizing your sock drawer will keep you from doing something more important—like the laundry.
