We are no longer in the cake making business! Now we make “Jiffy” mix (or “Epi” mix).
When EpiAnalytics started back in 2008 we interacted with a lot of IT executives and support personnel. The IT executives knew how to integrate our on-demand technology solutions and the support personnel were the subject matter domain experts that could validate the value (ROI) of unstructured data – primarily employee and customer communications.
Through the years we saw the emergence of new employee titles such as, Customer Feedback Manager, and Customer Insight Manager. Soon after, we saw new Customer Feedback Departments and Customer Insight Department and even newer titles such as Chief Insight Officer. The value of mining customer feedback data and had spawned new departments and unearthed new value for companies. So instead of working with IT in operations EpiAnalytics began working with data analyst and data management executives who were primarily responsible for distributing insights (valuable business data) throughout the organization.
As the acceptance of analyzing unstructured data became an imperative, it quickly became apparent that different departments within an organization had unique needs in the data we were transforming. For example, product teams need to stay abreast of product feedback for enhancements and product feature suggestions, while sales and marketing have needs associated with campaign success and sales efforts, and support departments need information about customer support issues to create better customer experiences and control costs. Providing verifiable ROI is key.
Next, EpiAnalytics migrated into transformation of unstructured automotive data with our VINoptions product and we observed the same type of evolution. We started seeing that companies wanted to build in-house data management operations. A colleague recently asked me if this was a new phenomenon. I replied “no, we’ve seen this playbook before”. Data Analytics experts say that the world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data… and as companies are successfully monetizing the value of data to create competitive advantage it’s becoming clear that having in-house data resources is an imperative.
COVID-19 has drastically accelerated the digital revolution – perhaps speeding up customer acceptance by 2 or 3 years – and the evolution of the data and analytics marketplace. For example, now companies that used to buy complete data products analogous to buying a gourmet cake, are more interested in building departments and teams that can bake the cake in-house. In other words, they are building out industrial data kitchens with executive chefs and line cooks and even data washers that can make the right recipes and flavors for the unique needs of their internal business constituents.
The future: learning from historical industry patterns, this recent evolutionary acceleration has caused us to change how we view our product mix – we now view ourselves not so much as a pastry chef making cakes but more of a production line making “Jiffy” mix (or “Epi” mix). Any organization that has specific data needs you can use the “Epi” mix to make recipes faster, cheaper, and more effectively allowing in-house resources to customize your recipes for your constituent’s unique needs.