Ok let’s clear one thing up straight away – the old dog in the title isn’t me! In this case the old dog is the customer data technology market, which hasn’t yet delivered that elusive “full 360 view” of a customer. It is based on relational database technology and separated analytic and operational uses. It’s time to teach that old dog some new (technology) tricks.

I am thrilled to once again be focused on customer data and analytics technology. I’ve spent most of my career working on customer-centric technology, from master data management to integration and governance, big data and recently predictive analytics. Most organizations I’ve met want better insights on their customers – in fact, 50% of big data projects are focused on the customer domain. The need for good customer data has never been greater.

Despite that, the number one problem I’ve heard for 15 years is “my customer data isn’t accurate”. That’s as true today as it was in 1999 when the Customer Data Integration (later Master Data Management) market emerged.

How can this still be a challenge today? It’s because the world we operate in has changed so drastically. The proliferation of devices and the Internet of Things mean that customers are interacting with organizations via more channels and devices than ever before. And those new interactions don’t produce nicely structured data ready to be loaded into a database or warehouse for analysis. In fact, 80% of data is unstructured – webchat logs, social media posts, call centre recordings, PDF documents … and all of those contain value insights into the customer.

New ‘big data’ technology allows us to manage all forms of data from internal and external sources, to analyze incredible volumes of data at real-time speeds. These technologies can challenge established status quo and bring together operational and analytic processing in one system. They can also truly build a complete context for a customer by moving well-beyond traditional data record matching into the realm of ‘understanding the complete context of all customer data’. But those technologies are a collection of tools – collectively they could solve the customer data problem, but what’s needed is someone to bring them all together with a specific focus on customer data.

And that is why I am so thrilled to join InfoTrellis. They have a unique offering to address the customer data problem in a new way with AllSight – managing every type of data, building the full context for a customer with contextual record-building, and enabling operational and analytic processing on a single system.

Watch out customer data technology market – you’re about to be disrupted!