You don’t need to be a fine woodworker to sit in a chair. An inability to precisely construct an angled mortise and tenon joint does not preclude you from resting your feet. Similarly the time is rapidly approaching where you won’t need to be a marketing scientist to deploy analytics. Ignorance of neural networks will no longer impede your ability to use them to improve a campaign. The democratization of predictive modeling or other trends involving the intersection of customer analytics and marketing technology is much of what I will cover for Forrester Research.

In my new role as a senior analyst I look forward to helping Customer Insight professionals increase marketing and business returns through becoming more intelligent enterprises. This might involve guiding clients on technology decisions, organizational strategy, or benchmarking to their peers. What topics would you like to see me cover?

In the age of the customer I believe companies can find competitive advantage through analytics. The rise of big data, always addressable customers, and real-time optimization is combining to challenge analytic teams. Leading companies will leverage the increasing variety and volume of data to broaden the questions addressed, advance decision management systems, and enhance predictive and real-time models. Teams built for batch-based campaigns in one or two channels that utilize one or two data sources will be under intense pressure to evolve.

I imagine a few people reading this will be interested in my past. In short, I am a former science teacher, turned marketing scientist, turned analytics manager. Most recently I was the director of advanced analytics at Supervalu, leading a team that delivered a variety of descriptive and predictive analyses. In my role as analyst I hope to draw from all those roles. I will strive to balance the curiosity of a teacher with the understanding of a practitioner and the strategic focus of a functional owner.

I am excited to have landed at Forrester Research and look forward to working with you. To help me research what is most relevant to you, I welcome your comments about issues, concerns, or predictions on customer analytics and marketing technology.