Preparing for a New Era of Consumer Data

Your company is swimming — nay, drowning — in consumer data. Thanks to new and emerging digital and data-collecting technologies, each of your divisions, brands, and product units is being inundated with consumer data sources from advertising, promotions, outside agencies, loyalty programs, focus groups — and from physical retail and online selling partner and platforms.

Much of a company's data inundation is often siloed within divisions, marketing, branding, and product units. These business units either consider the data they generate and collect proprietary or, because there is no overall corporate data policy, lack the wherewithal or methodology to effectively share their data or act on it successfully as a unit or company. Executives not inculcated in consumer data analysis are often frozen by the sheer volume of it or frustrated by conflicting data interpretations and conclusions.

For example, before adopting a more centralized consumer data operation, beverage giant AB InBev data was sitting with agencies or siloed within the company's brands. It had no single place to store data, capture insights, or use its first-party data effectively — a challenge that was affecting its ability to adapt to an upcoming cookie-less world.