A recent article in B2B marketing magazine discussed latency issues and what it means for a business to be able to access and analyse its data faster.
“To give organisations competitive advantage, they need to put big data to work, and should be considering how data can be transferred to provide near real-time data analysis. Network latency slows wide area networks (WANs) and impinges B2B and B2C marketers from gaining access to an accurate picture of their customers and markets.”
At a board level, the entire C-suite is talking about ROI. From Sales and marketing through to Operations and Finance the data a business generates across all channels is the key to delivering insight and understanding that will help drive growth and show return. But it’s the analysis of this data that uncovers the magic and informs ongoing strategy.
CIOs have a responsibility to ensure that the infrastructure adequately supports this increasing reliance on data – a precious commodity to businesses looking to stay ahead.
With data volumes growing year-on-year the many are being put against the clock to deliver data to where it needs to be as quickly as possible to ensure that the insight extracted is as fresh as possible. If key players in a business can’t get access to data in real-time, the metrics will not be current and a business is always working one-step behind.
The challenges of network latency issues (delay) and poor performing networks are putting business critical obstacles in the way of a slick approach to data implementation and businesses that are not able to overcome these issues, are in danger of being left behind to competitors that have more efficient ways of managing, storing and moving data.
One spokesperson in the B2B Marketing article explained:
“Rather than solely looking at it from an infrastructure perspective, marketers and their IT counterparts should work together to address what they wish to achieve from a data perspective. Data is the core currency today – not the infrastructure – so speed will be crucial component to marketers extracting maximum ROI from it.
Marketers must begin by defining the data requirements as this will determine the infrastructure. The fresher the data, the more valuable it is. After all marketing is about knowing your customer, and velocity is imperative when it comes to putting this insight to work for the benefit of your customer. The quicker we get large volumes of data for analysis, the better the decision.”
Unlike any other time in history, technology is being required to deliver to the business function and responsibility on the CIO has deepened greatly because of data and the potential it has to deliver competitive advantage and the much covered ROI.
