Data, data, data. If there is one industry buzzword that has come up the most this year, data might be in the same conversation as esports.
According to a study done earlier this year by MIT Sloan Management Review, the results found that only 27 percent of the senior executives they interviewed described their organizational decision-making as data-driven. That number is 11 percent lower than the number of executives who said their decisions are still based off intuition.
VenueNext and new CEO Anthony Perez see the biggest obstacle when it comes to making data-driven decisions is the sheer amount of data available.
“We’re focused right now on continuing to enhance the tools that we offer to make the data our technology produces more accessible and actionable. We’ve got customers that are doing some really exciting things with our platform, but the data is so massive that it can be sort of difficult to wrap your arms around.”
As the former CMO of the Orlando Magic, Perez saw first hand the impact data could have on an organization.
While with the club, Perez’s focus was on the buildup of data warehouses with the goal of being able to create more personalized and automated interactions.
“We invested significantly in data with the focus being on how that could improve our marketing automation. Specifically, with email marketing, we were able to leverage predictive models to create dynamic interactions with individuals.”’
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A VenueNext customer while at the Magic, the familiarity with the technology made the transition to the new role that much easier.
He was also able to see what other teams struggled with when they came to him while he was with the team and asked how they could do something similar. It’s this knowledge that will be the driving force for VenueNext heading into 2019 as the opportunity to provide more tools to digest and understand the data captured by the company.
“Every team is different when it comes to their investment in data. We want to make sure whether a team is far along or just getting started, they can find value in our tools. We want to have our clients come to us and be able to use what we have built to start realizing their objectives right away.”
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The proliferation in data, both in teams and leagues wanting more and wanting to understand it better comes from the likes of Amazon, Google, and Spotify being able to deliver personalized experiences for customers.
With consumer expectations set, the days of spray-and-pray marketing are over. Not only has personalization changed the game, it has changed what customers expect to see from brands looking for their attention and their dollars.
“Brands are flaunting personalization and companies are investing heavily in data, but oftentimes investing and executing are two separate things,” said Perez. “Being able to provide these experiences is still difficult.”
Whether it is making changes at the beginning of the year or the middle of the year, Perez feels that teams who may feel like they are behind in their data really aren’t that many steps away from being in a good place.
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“Everyone has different resources, everyone has different objectives, but luckily thanks to the rise in tech solutions, being able to make use of data that was once left untouched has never been easier.”
Although data isn’t going anywhere anytime soon and it can still sometimes feel like the Wild West, there is never a bad time to start taking advantage of building a richer profile of your consumer and audience.
