Mastering Customer Data — A CIO Imperative

In today's fast-paced global economy, examples of how empowered customers and citizens use social technology to influence everything from brands to governments are all around us. The Arab Spring clearly shows the power of technology to empower people. In this new digital age, marketing teams must react at the speed of the market: Product development life cycles that used to last many years are compressed into months or weeks; customer service expectations have moved from same-day response to instant response; public relations snafus must be handled in minutes rather than days; marketing campaigns are adjusted in real time based on instant feedback from social media. In this new era, mastering customer data becomes the key to success and represents the biggest opportunity for IT to influence business results since the dawn of the Internet. This report examines successful CIO and CMO partnerships to provide insights for CIOs on how to tap into this opportunity in support of mastering the customer data flow.