At the recent Adobe Symposium in Singapore, Koji Suzuki, the Head of Data-Driven Marketing at Rakuten told a story of the importance of spinach.
When analysing the data of what groceries people bought, if people bought spinach, they were more likely to buy many other vegetables. When they turned around and asked what if they bought tomatoes or potatoes, they did not find a similar relationship. What made spinach so special?
They discovered customers think of spinach as a more perishable vegetable. Once customers realized an online grocery store can deliver spinach in great condition, an emotional shift takes place and they crosses over into acceptance of online grocery shopping. Such customers end up buying a bigger basket of goods or vegetables as this case may be.
It was a very memorable story about data, analysis, actionable insights and customer centricity. And a great example of storytelling around data to achieve digital success.
No success without data
In various sessions at the symposium, there is an underlying recognition of the importance of data for businesses to be able to deliver the future digital experience that can live up to customers’ expectations. The vision of what’s possible seemed to depend on a mastery of data.
If there is a shortage of digital talent, the shortage of data scientists is generally considered even more dire. How can businesses achieve mastery of data to take advantage of digital opportunities if they cannot hire enough data scientists? The answer may well lie in your own organization.
Unicorns in your backyard
Instead of looking for the proverbial digital unicorn, I’d argue every business has dormant unicorns waiting to be awakened. If you look at the Rakuten example of data discovery to identify patterns, correlation and clustering analysis, those data skills exist in most enterprises. For an internet company like Rakuten, digital is core and its business analysis naturally included analysing online data. For businesses that are still developing a focus on digital, the opportunity is to tap the analytical resources already available as part of getting digital on the business agenda.
You should look into your business, operations, finance or even product management areas to find analytical experts with the core skills to support a data-driven digital business. When you plan programs to grow digital capabilities as part of a digitization drive, it is important to coopt your business, operations and analysts colleagues.
Your company’s existing analysts understand your business data. If they can extend their expertise into understanding and analysing the digital data you have available, it can have a powerful impact. They have deep knowledge of your existing business systems, processes and internal data, all invaluable in integrating digital insights into the core business.
Story of the customer
Siva Ganeshanandan, APAC Director for Adobe Marketing Cloud, talked about the changing titles of the symposium attendees. When they first started, it was mostly people from IT. Over the last couple of years, they observed a widening range of job functions attending the symposium – a sign of the growing interest in digital across the enterprise. They also started to see never-before-seen titles that reflected how companies are starting to look at digital and what they are trying to accomplish. There were attendees who carried titles like “#storyteller” and “customer journey manager”.
For companies to use data successfully, we need to tell compelling stories. Storytelling is important both internally as well as externally. In a company, it will take a village to develop new digital business models and deliver the digital experience customers expect. Many of the people who need to be enlisted and who need to be convinced to reimagine what they should be doing, may not have a deep understanding of data analysis even if they demand data-driven, evidence based decision making.
Visual, narrative stories provide the context and insight to turn what data analysis discovered into unforgettable stories about the customer journey in the digital age. These stories will persuade everyone on why they need to change and guide them on the how.
Though Rakuten did show the cluster analysis chart, it was the story of why spinach was important that stuck in people’s minds. It is not just data analysis or storytelling but data storytelling that is going to help move the organization forward.
Are you able to tell customer stories from your data? Do you know what is your spinach?
Digital success is going to depend on developing compelling customer stories derived from analysis of relevant data in a world awashed with it.
Adobe again delivered a great symposium of sessions packed with data, insights and real life experience of companies. I expect like last year they will be putting up the sessions on demand. Do watch out for them when they are posted on the symposium website especially the LockNote by Robert Rose. His brutal look at what companies do today in the name of content marketing would make you weep because you may recognize yourself among the guilty.
Digital Optimist 