I was very interested to read a great post by fellow Irish blogger Damien Mulley in which he wrote:
…Most companies have massive databases of customer details that are sitting there, gathering dust. Why not work on those databases and poll your customers …
The context of Damien’s comment was a larger piece about using key assets in your organisation to drive up business or drive down costs. Damien rightly points out that information (on customers) is a valuable asset that most companies simply don’t have working for them.
He references the Obama campaign, which many hail for using all the bells, whistles and tweets of Web2.0 but which was ultimately driven by good management and application of the campaign’s information assets.
He’s perfectly correct. I wrote about exactly that topic here (November 2008) and have touched on it in other posts and articles. Unfortunately, Damien’s “Golden Database” needs to come with a big Caveat Emptor. (more…)