A special report on managing information: A different game | The Economist - 0 views
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Analytics—performing statistical operations for forecasting or uncovering correlations such as between Pop-Tarts and hurricanes—can have a big pay-off. In Britain the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) sifted through seven years of sales data for a marketing campaign that increased regular visitors by 70%. By examining more than 2m transaction records, the RSC discovered a lot more about its best customers: not just income, but things like occupation and family status, which allowed it to target its marketing more precisely. That was of crucial importance, says the RSC’s Mary Butlin, because it substantially boosted membership as well as fund-raising revenue.
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Most CIOs admit that their data are of poor quality. In a study by IBM half the managers quizzed did not trust the information on which they had to base decisions. Many say that the technology meant to make sense of it often just produces more data. Instead of finding a needle in the haystack, they are making more hay
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Many new business insights come from “dead data”: stored information about past transactions that are examined to reveal hidden correlations. But now companies are increasingly moving to analysing real-time information flows.
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"Analytics-performing statistical operations for forecasting or uncovering correlations such as between Pop-Tarts and hurricanes-can have a big pay-off. In Britain the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) sifted through seven years of sales data for a marketing campaign that increased regular visitors by 70%. By examining more than 2m transaction records, the RSC discovered a lot more about its best customers: not just income, but things like occupation and family status, which allowed it to target its marketing more precisely. That was of crucial importance, says the RSC's Mary Butlin, because it substantially boosted membership as well as fund-raising revenue."
