By Christine at ServiceSource

You may not want to talk about it or deal with it, but you’ve got piles of dirty data. We all do.

In our personal lives dirty data takes the form of duplicate photos and incorrect addresses for holiday cards. For most companies the problem is a thousand times worse. Dirty data is more than an annoyance or a wasted stamp. It costs billions in lost revenue a year. It’s polluting your forecast visibility and clogging revenue arteries that are the lifeblood of the company.

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By Christine Heckart, Chief Marketing Officer at ServiceSource.

Have you heard the new term ‘Fast Data’ around the water cooler? A recent article on the Oracle blog at Forbes.com, “Fast Data Gets A Big Jump On Big Data,” talks about how and why Fast Data is becoming one of the top requirements for organisations trying to keep up with their information.

Move over big data…looks like fast data is the next new business intelligence issue creeping into your territory. But is it really a new problem?

I thought the blog was interesting because ‘Fast Data’ has actually been part of the ‘Big Data’ discussion for years. But thanks to the blog post, the buzzword may make a splashy new appearance in the business intelligence world sending companies running forsolutions.

Truth is, though, this isn’t a new business concern. In fact, Fast Data, earlier termed ‘Data Velocity’, was identified as a dimension for extreme information management in a Gartner research article written back in 2001 by Doug Laney titled, “3-D Data Management: Controlling Data Volume, Velocity, and Variety.” These “3 V’s: Volume, Velocity, and Variety” were identified as the key dimensions for getting a hold on extreme information.

So here we are, over 10 years later, still talking about the power of data velocity and figuring out solutions for this data management challenge.

At this point, are you wondering about fast data, what it is, how it relates to big data, and what any of this means for your renewals and recurring revenue?

By Yiorgos Hadjiandrea, Adconion Direct at Adconion Media Group

The last few years have seen exciting developments in digital technology, with the introduction of Web 3.0 offering an intuitive user experience built on intelligent analysis of data. As the industry continues to grow and develop though, so do the challenges that it brings. Only ten years ago advertisers could reach 90 per cent of their audience through three types of media: print, TV, and radio. Today however, audiences are fragmented and must be reached across a growing proliferation of devices.

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By Jon Milward is Operations Director, Northdoor

Today’s IT environments are unbelievably complex and littered with thousands of hybrid technologies.  Environments tend to evolve over the years, often through multiple acquisitions and this can lead to a patchwork effect within the IT environment. Typically an organisation will need to replace legacy applications to upgrade old systems, or as a result of an acquisition they may need to move data from one application to another.

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By Andy Cotgreave, senior data analyst at Tableau Software

The willingness of Britons to stand patiently in line, waiting for their turn, has come to define us as a nation. It could also be a habit that harms our productivity. Today, the sheer volume of data running through businesses is increasing at an exponential rate.

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By Mike Sanderson, Director of Strategy, 1Spatial

I first came across the term Big Data in 2011 when a McKinsey report (Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition and productivity) landed on my desk. If McKinsey was interested in this phenomenon then it was worth further study. Later texts provided the three Vs framework for big data, where the three Vs are Volume, Velocity and Variety (further definition can be found in Big Data Analytics, (Russom, 2011) TDWI Research).

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By Sacha Berlik, General Manager, Europe, DataXu

Big data has been a buzzword for some time now, but the volume, velocity, variety and variability of data are so great that marketers are in danger of being overwhelmed.  At precisely the moment when real customer understanding seems so within reach, the avalanche of data makes it seem as far away as ever.

While companies make the right noises, many are squandering the data/insights that they have invested in capturing. Consider that, according to Gartner, enterprise data is expected to grow by 650% in the next five years, much of that from the increase in digital footprints created by consumers. It goes without saying that the failure to use this data correctly not only reduces ROI, but also puts companies at risk competitively.

The simple fact is this: companies that master the ability to manage their data and make fast, intelligent decisions will win. Those that don’t will fall behind and the gap between the two will only widen as budgets continue to migrate to the digital sector. Here are three reasons why marketers need to embrace big data:

1.       It gives marketers the golden goose: measurement

A constant issue in digital marketing is measurement, both for the internal team and the external team who want to measure results.

Companies rightly want to be able to understand and analyse spend: how many conversions did it get? What was the rise in sales? etc. For a long time, this has been hard for agencies and in-house marketing teams to prove. However, thanks to changing consumer habits and the increasing adoption of mobile devices, consumers are leaving a visible digital trail of actions and responses to anything they consume. Properly analysed, data allows marketers to identify increasingly granular customer segments. The era of 1:1 marketing is really upon us.

This not only gives them the ROI to prove the campaign, but also gives them the best customer behaviour insights, enabling them to tweak and improve activities continually.

2.       You can work in real time

Another benefit of effectively harnessing big data is the time advantage it can provide to smart companies. Competitive advantage has previously been weighted towards companies with the best supply chains, but in a world where the internet is the biggest, most effective demand tool devised, it is the companies that can detect demand and meet it the fastest that will enjoy increasing advantage.

Globalisation, technological innovation and internet connectivity has meant companies find themselves selling into a crowded marketplace more characterised by an abundance of choices and information, than yesteryear’s scarcity and opacity. Amid such abundance, finding and matching consumer demand via data analytics becomes a critical survival skill for the enterprise. And since demand detected earlier can be more profitable than demand identified at a later time, the company that can detect demand and satisfy it fastest will likely rise to the top.

3.       It’s cost-effective!

Not only is budget moving towards digital marketing (and therefore, big data), but, by embracing big data, marketers can be cost-effective and efficient with their campaigns. Looking back at the previous points, you can see that much of the use of big data revolves around the ability of companies to gain deeper insight into campaign successes (and failures) and amend them accordingly. Therefore, it also means companies can save money – learning where to place content and getting the best price possible by acting in real-time.

Daunting though Big Data may seem, with the right systems in place to gather intelligence and break it down, businesses can convert it in to business success. This leaves me with only one final thing to say: the one thing marketers need to invest in: analysts to understand the data.