Introduction: to understand, you must ask

If I had to choose just one hot topic in the field of digital commerce it would, without a doubt, be data.

But what about data? That’s the challenge. Many companies and experts in the field have their own individual points of view on how to improve data utilisation. For a business leader, it can be difficult to form an overall understanding of which questions they should be asking and the decisions they should make — the topic of data is simply too broad. Ultimately, data encompasses every aspect of a business.

With this handbook, we’ve attempted to make it a little easier for you to approach this vast theme. We’ve talked with academics, thought leaders, data companies, major retailers and disruptive brands to drill down into the topic of data from both a strategic and a practical perspective. In addition, our consultants share what they’ve learned from working with data in a digital commerce setting.

Insights from industry leaders

To produce this handbook, I sat down with some people I find inspiring and companies that I feel are doing interesting things with data. I learned a lot through these discussions, and I feel ever more convinced of the importance of data — and its utilisation for business growth.

Dr Daniel McCarthy broadens the topic of data utilisation into the highest possible level of abstraction: how to actually evaluate a company’s worth based on customer data. While we wouldn’t necessarily expect it to change a company’s valuation model overnight, this approach surely provides inspiration for pushing holistic data management into a decision-making tool for board-level discussions.

On a more concrete level, the ultimate goal for data utilisation would be to have the ability to continuously measure and optimise commercial actions based on customer lifetime value (CLV). Many of the experts interviewed for the book touch on this, but Dr Peter Fader, a leading scholar on the topic and a dear friend of ours, provides an update on the status of the CLV framework in companies today and the potential future development areas.

For even further inspiration on new approaches to data utilisation, Erik Zetterberg from Singular Society explains, from a designer's perspective, how his company’s revolutionary business model has introduced a new way of using customer and transactional data, and how this business model helps them tackle privacy issues around data.

Once a target state for the commercial utilisation of data has been defined, the reality is that the journey towards the end goal will take years. How to really succeed in this long-term transformation while maintaining coherence and quickly gaining a tangible impact is a billion-euro question.

Minna Vakkilainen from Kesko, a leading Finnish retailer, and Saku Laitinen from European fashion ecommerce leader Zalando have already been on that journey for some years. Vakkilainen shares her experiences of successfully leading Kesko’s transition into a data-driven company starting from bottom-up buy-in. Meanwhile, Laitinen shares his slightly more technical point of view on how, over the years, Zalando built highly sophisticated content personalisation capabilities that are now at the heart of the company’s commercial operations.

Paramount in data strategy implementation is the ability to successfully build the core data architecture. Yves Mulkers, a data and analytics strategist and recognised global thought leader, elaborates on how companies can succeed in data capability build projects and shares some of the most interesting recent development trends he’s seen in the field of data architecture.

Major data-related build and transformation projects are commonplace in modern companies. Once suitable data capabilities are in place, systematically utilising them for commercial actions should be a high priority, meaning that maximising the impact of the available data is central to success. Vishnu Sahoo and Edward Ford, top experts from Supermetrics — a market-leading marketing and sales data service — share their views on the key success factors for generating true business value from data science and analytics, how companies are adapting to evolving privacy regulations and the latest development areas in the field.

From ideas to practice

To support our interviews with these leading experts and their broader insights on the above themes, we also wanted to introduce some very concrete takeaways from the field of digital sales and marketing. For this, our own experts here at Columbia Road, who work hands-on with these topics, share some learnings that we see as critical for the decision makers of today.

Aki Pöntinen shares his research on the topic of utilising AI in B2B sales and Roope Paju, Antton Ikola and Elli Pyykkö reflect on what they’ve learned from tackling the challenge of unconnected data. Meanwhile, Juuli Kiiskinen reflects on the future of brands in the age of data-based personalisation and Laura Purontaus describes a data engineer’s role in a growth team, building a bridge between the themes of this book and the practice of daily digital sales operations.