Big Data and It's Implications For Customer Experience

Now that I have a bit of a new focus for this blog around big data and how that impacts the customer experience, I thought I would write a series of posts that, at the core, will lay out what people are doing with big data today and how it is been useful for driving customer experience in organizations.  I know there are a ton of blogs or sites that may discuss this, but I am going to try to keep it simple, short and understandable for anyone to consume.

Over the course of the next few blog posts, I am going to try to lay out:

• What big data really means to most people
• Why it is important
• What kinds of use cases are being deployed currently
• The associated business value of those use cases
• The technology behind the big data ecosystem
• The journey data takes to get from being produced to being used

By doing this, I hope to help pull back the veil of complexity that seems to trip most non developer/non technical folks up when they are learning about big data.  It surprises me how poor of a job most big data companies are doing in communicating the capabilities of big data technology and how those capabilities relate to true business value.  And this is not just a problem for executives or what most people refer to as the "business" people.  I am still seeing many people that are considered technical in their job roles who don't fully understand the technology ecosystem in big data and how it can enable business value.

So these first few posts will try to break this complexity and confusion down to small, digestable nuggets that anyone can consume and begin to use in their role.

First up, we will focus on what big data really means to most people and why it is important.

New Beginnings

This is a new beginning for me, not only with my blog but also with work changes over the last few years.

Over the last 4-5 years, I have been writing fairly regularly about technology in a space that was near and dear to my heart for many years, customer service.  This blog was all about creating authentic customer experiences, which I believed and continue to believe, are at the heart of any company that is going to survive in the ever changing business climate we live in. 

About 18 months ago now, I got a phone call from a good friend of mine from college that had some questions for me about technology.  He knew I worked at Salesforce and wanted to ask me about a company that was in the Salesforce ecosystem.  I helped answer his questions about this technology and then we wrapped up the call.  He then called me a few more times and thus started me on a unforgettable journey with him and a few other guys to start a company called Onyara.

Onyara was really the true dream startup experience that literally none of us expected.  It had the meager beginnings of starting in a basement to talk about how we were going to do this thing.  It had all of the anxiety of leaving steady jobs with steady paychecks which were providing for guys with young families.  It had the ups and downs of interpersonal relationships, raising money, finding the first customers etc…. And we were blessed to have a successful exit of the business, being sold off to a larger company.

I consider myself incredibly blessed to have been a part of this journey with Onyara and specifically with the guys that I got a chance to work with for 18 or so months.  It was a great adventure and one that I will never forget.

So now I am on to the next chapter of work life.  Again working for a much bigger company that acquired our team back in late August of 2015.  Integrating into a new company is an interesting challenge all it’s own.  But it is one that I am happy to take on and help our new parent be ridiculously successful.

Which means that I will begin to morph this blog to cover other, newer, fresh topics that are top of mind for people in the Enterprise Business space and specifically, I will focus on how technology is impacting these areas.

For now, some of the new topics will focus on data, as I believe that data really is the great equalizer.  Producing it, Moving it, Processing it, Mining it, Enriching it, Transforming it, Analyzing it, Storing it and most importantly, creating some specific and meaningful action to take because of it. This last bit about taking action being the most interesting part for me in the future.

I will then just let it flow and see where I take things.

I hope you enjoy the journey along with me as I give you my perspective and what I am seeing in the market.

Rob Sader