I believe today, most brands do know what to with it. It’s getting each system to work together to deliver the desired experience. While every company is different, each with their own set of challenges and opportunities, I believe today the challenge is in the execution. Let’s follow the journey most of us have been on:

In speaking with Forrester analysts, they point out that one imperative is having a cohesive data strategy. An organization needs a strategy around their data collection and usage. The collection to ensure it’s uniform across all departments. Too many times in the past, we’ve seen departments securing their own technologies (think marketing, think customer service) creating their own version of data capture; focused solely on the needs of that area, not with a lens for all potential uses and consistency across the organization. It’s imperative that organizations create a unified data strategy. Compared to 5 years ago, it appears that most organizations understand this and have a data strategy in place.

We’re seeing more and more organizations working collaboratively across their departments, where, as an example, the marketing team leans on the technology team in their procurement efforts. In the past, organizations were more siloed than we’re seeing today. Many have been working on their digital transformations for 7+ years. It seems, now, we’re all beginning to figure out what to make of all these new technologies, how they fit together and that having a technology organization to help guide our decisions is imperative to success. We’ve learned a lot of lessons, made better decisions and have come to understand that technology, data capture and usage are a team sport.

I’ve been on the road a great deal this year, speaking to clients, learning their goals and hearing their challenges. Getting data to flow across various technologies to be able to action effectively (relevant and personalized) real-time at every customer touchpoint is a real challenge.

One recent discussion went like this: “We believe we have all the needed systems; each one doing its part. Now we’re focused on the getting that necessary data into each system real time so that we can execute on the (perfect) desired customer experience.”

This client is a high-end retailer. They want to be able to get all the purchasing data and loyalty data into a profile that the clienteling system can use when personal shoppers are meeting with customers. They want to take this data, add in real time interaction data (i.e. what the person is looking at today, purchasing today and which items are still in consideration) so that the associate in the next department as the data before the customer walks over. Plus this data needs to be available to the customer in their app, so that they have realtime access to their profile, offers and alerts.

Working to deliver a high touch, real time relevant experience takes the concept of data orchestration to a whole new level.

This is the challenge at hand today. It goes far beyond making sure the email you receive has a relevant offer.