Time, this month, for a little navel-gazing
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It starts with a couple of short pieces on data quality — the issues and some tentative solutions. I’m sure I’ve banged on about this before. I make no apology for doing so again. In the last few months, wearing my other ‘civilian’ hat, I have worked on three projects that have had to be cancelled for reasons associated with data. Or, to be precise, poor data. There was the predictive modelling project, which foundered when it became clear that the IT department had not been updating the marketing system fully or accurately. Then there is the multi-million pound CRM system — going nowhere because the processes to check and enhance data are not in place. And, finally, there is the pan-European business that wants a new database, yet can’t implement one because of the standard of its data. There are many reasons for this. Not least is the fact that in most organisations, data has no true senior level champion. It is the bit that everyone assumes will be sorted out by everyone else. The bit that happens when the ‘important’ people leave the room. I suppose I should be grateful. After all, it keeps me gainfully employed. I can firmly predict that in ten years time, when technology has moved on several light years beyond where we are now — and the whole world is enthusing about the merits of the latest Linux CRM
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Database Marketing & Customer Strategy Management
system — there will still be plenty of work to do on the data front. Much as I am an enthusiast for sorting out data issues, the navel gazing goes a fair way beyond that. This issue contains a couple of practice papers which focus on data. More to the point, they are papers from suppliers with a story to tell. On a good day, I open my inbox and find new papers arrived there. Some — hopefully the majority — will be papers I have commissioned; others will fall into one of two broad categories: • Academics in search of an outlet; or • Suppliers with a story to tell. Of these, it is definitely the second category that causes the greatest heart searching. Unsolicited academic papers usually meet the journal’s standards as far as writing goes. It is then just a question of determining whether they have anything relevant or interesting to say. As one referee recently responded to an author in another journal: ‘Are there any concrete recommendations falling out of this paper? Or is academic writing meant to be a bit fluffy?’ Not altogether fair, but there is a smidgeon of truth to it. Academics are writing for a particular community that holds impartiality in high regard. At times, that appears to translate as a reluctance to take a stand on anything.
Vol. 12, 2, 102–103
䉷 Henry Stewart Publications 1741–2447 (2005)
Editorial
But it is the suppliers who are difficult. Some do understand the game: it is fine for them to write up case histories; to provide results and also comparisons that can subsequently be challenged. It is not alright to submit a paper that boils down to little more than ‘we’re the greatest!’. And that could be that except for two things. F
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