Just under a decade has passed since The New York Times reporter Thomas L. Friedman published, The World is Flat. In his bestselling book, Friedman gives an in depth summary of globalization and how it has affected global commerce in both the developed and developing world. The overarching theme is that the traditional barriers to participation in the global economy have been equalized by technological advances in communication, manufacturing and travel.
A similar revolution is now underway within businesses internally. What’s flattened now are barriers to information that have been either trapped within a single department, difficult to action, or both. Just as technology flattened (or democratized) the global economy, advances in data storage have flattened barriers to data distribution between the likes of product R&D teams all the way down to in-store retail staff.
The catch is that businesses must put themselves in a position to take advantage of the data created by all of their disparate end points. What’s more, the tools for collection and action are there, the question is how companies should organize around those tools and how they can best integrate multiple data sources into a dynamic and functional narrative to be actioned by different teams and their slick new tools.
The data supply chain
The functional narrative – so to speak – is a data supply chain that consists of information gathered at multiple ends of a business. This chain provides a complete and dynamic picture of your business that serves customer interactions and internal strategic decisions. Unfortunately, one size does not fit all when it comes to designing and implementing a successful data supply chain. A smaller company with few resources would be hard pressed to copy the strategy adopted by Amazon, the costs being just one of many roadblocks to successful implementation.
There is, however, a light at the end of the tunnel. New tools and innovative data storage techniques are democratizing access to useful information allowing companies of all sizes to connect their information and drive offline strategy from online insights and vice versa. When an organization begins to seriously consider integrating data from disparate ends of their operation they are limited only by the creativity and ingenuity applied after the offline and online dots have been linked.
Digital data delivery pyramid
Once constructed to the needs of your particular business, the data supply chain serves multiple layers of the business each with differing strategic goals. Outlined below are the main categories of decision making and how they fit into the hierarchy of a business.
From the top-down, businesses can gather strategic product development insights from developing online and offline product popularity trends. For example, a consistent and gradual increase in pageviews for a product category signals declining consumer interest that can be translated into a shift in manufacturing resources. By adapting in real time companies can identify trends before they are full swing and obvious to everyone including competitors.
Mirroring this strategy, businesses can feed insights from ground-level retail interactions that drive changes in online strategies. A retailer who can share insights gained in store with ecommerce managers deploying optimizations globally is exponentially increasing the value of feedback received from a customer.
