How Many Versions of The Truth Does Your Company Have?
September 11, 2009
Years ago, while at one of my previous employers, I was part of a cross functional team of people from across the organization given the seemingly simple task of identifying our best customers. Seems like this should have been pretty easy right? Define what best means, run a report or two, discuss the findings and cross it off the “to-do” list. Oh how naive I was to believe it would be so smooth.
In reality it took months to determine that there were in fact numerous clusters of our best customers, yet no master list that everyone could agree upon. Marketing had its list, and so did sales, and accounting, and finance, and operations. Everyone was pulling different points of data from different systems, and thus getting radically different results. We had multiple versions of the truth. Sadly, we never did figure it out. A month into the project, the company was bought out and we were pretty much all downsized out within a couple months – this actually ended up being a great thing for me. Still, that experience has stuck with me, and taught me a valuable lesson – to be useful, data needs to present one version of the truth.
Had we been able to create this list quickly and accurately, we could have spent time trying to determine the best ways to serve our best customers. We could have examined ways to get new customers that were similar to our best customers, convert good customers into great ones, and improved the results of the organization. Instead we spent time and money simply trying to figure out whose list was the right list. What a waste!
As the “marketing guy” I am not the utmost authority at LUCRUM on business intelligence and data architecture. Still, having gone through that experience makes me genuinely appreciate the services we provide our customers. I have been in their shoes – seeking the truth, seemingly finding it, wanting to move forward, only to have everything come to a screeching halt because of inconsistent, incomplete information. It is a frustrating situation to be in, and I smile every time we solve such a problem for a Client.
If you are spending more time debating the truth as described by your data than you are determining what to actually do about it, you should talk to us. We can deliver one accurate, actionable, complete, and timely version of the truth for you – saving you time, money, and a whole lot of aggravation.
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