Through the Curtains of the Waterfall

Today on the way to work was listening to one of the up-coming indie-pop bands Sheppard from Australia. Their first single “Geronimo” had managed to break into the UK top 40 last month. The song caught my attention not because of the upbeat rhythm, but because of the words, repeated a number times: “We can make this leap, through the curtain of the waterfall”. Wanted or not we all often sit  behind “the curtains of the waterfall” in our offices and like the waterfall curtain, the borders of our businesses make us see the word outside blurred and we not always can see the full picture.

But here is the good news, if you have seen the Pirates of the Caribbean or played the Legend of  Zelda you will know that in the cave behind the waterfall there is often a hidden treasure. This is also true for most businesses, holding well hidden treasures that are either unknown or simply forgotten. The treasure, in the current digital age comes in the form of data and to be more precise DARK DATA. The term dark data, set by Gartner, is defined as the information assets organisations collect, process and store during regular business activities, but generally fail to use for other purposes. Businesses often retain dark data for compliance purposes only, but not to retain and grow existing customers’ relationships.

Before you look internally to find this data, the place to start is understanding the context of the customers’ relationships or if I need to go back to the waterfall analogy, you need to go beyond the curtains of the waterfall. UNDERSTAND THE COTEXT, in which the customers are using ones services and products. In my world for example, if a customer is looking to start a new Vendor Finance Programme, there may be a number of different reasons of why the customer is planning for such a solution:

• it can because they want to improve their competitive position, after falling behind the competition or
• because they need to find an extra income stream to respond to recent margin pressure or
• because they are expanding too quickly and are not able to cope with increased demand for their offering;

 One solution, three complete different reasons! Each reason will require a different set of actions or data to be provided. Once clear about the context, ones need to look insight the organisation. Recently GE together with Accenture published a report  highlighting that when it comes to dealing with Big Data the 2 of the top 3 common challenges are related to the internal infrastructure: #1 reason: lack of system integration and #3 data silos. To execute a programme based on dark data, companies need to SIMPLIFY THE COMPLEXITY, by knowing the customer needs, select only a few critical metrics that are relevant.

To select the relevant data points companies need to look for the ones that are ACTIONABLE and provide SPECTACULAR (NEW) INSIGHTS. Actionable in terms of rather than raising new questions, the information collected and analysed leads to a particular action, for example highlighting which of the many channel partners of a particular Vendor has been extra credit line capacity and receive more stock. Went it comes to spectacular insights, no one is interested in information they already know or facts that are obvious, but will get excited about something new that will create new business opportunities.

It is not always easy to uncover this treasure, hidden deeply in the organisation. And when making the so much important first step you can always  refer to Sheppard’s song Geronimo to give you courage and help you go “beyond the curtain to the waterfall” and build event stronger relationship with your customers by leveraging assets that you already have in hand.