At the sviokla's Context blog, I came across the post titled "Turning Data Into Dollars: Wal-Mart Said What?", This is a topic of significant interest....Excerpts from this post....

Wall Street Journal reported how Tesco in the UK is beating up on Wal-Mart's asda chain by using Clubcard data to analyze their customers and create new offerings including providing beer discounts for new fathers who can no longer head to the pub, increase their beer purchases when they pick up the nappies for Junior. Wal-Mart management says that the increasing sophistication of use of data at Tesco had little to do with Tesco's success, which is the dumbest comment by management I have ever heard attributed to the world's largest retailer.

If it is so obvious why don't more companies do it? Well, I think there are at least three reasons. First, many organizations do not have a fact-based analytic culture. If your VP of marketing is not comfortable with sophisticated statistics, you probably have a culture that is non-analytic. Second, many organizations have fragmented data on customers and customer behavior, and aren't willing to make the necessary investment to bring the relevant data to bear. Third, and this is the most common problem, the power structure of the organization does not allow for implementation of findings.

From the executive's point of view, it is vital to remember that the natural tendency of any system to get smarter, faster, when it has more communication and feedback. With ever expanding digital description of everything, and the interconnection of all people and devices, the customer's IQ is going up faster all the time. Winning companies use comprehensive analytics to raise their Customer IQ faster than their competition. It is so obvious, that is often overlooked. Who knows, maybe Wal-Mart will not be able to go that next level of detail -- to the customer -- and will thereby become vulnerable after such an incredible run of success.

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Prashanth Rai