data insights

Come gather ’round, people, wherever you roam And admit that the waters around you have grown And accept it that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone If your time to you is worth savin’ Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone For the times they are a-changin’. — Bob Dylan The […]

Alignment between company values and executive’s values drives business growth. What does misalignment cause? Just ask Equinox and SoulCycle.

It’s nearly Independence Day in the US — a day filled with parades, fireworks, family, and, of course, delicious food. The day honors something that we, like the Founding Fathers before us, hold dear in the research organization at Forrester: the agreed-upon final wording of a document, devised by a team of thinkers, driven by […]

I am back from two days at UX STRAT 2019 — a conference that gathers an international community of design leaders and experience makers. This single-track conference offers presentations about the latest trends at the intersection of business strategy, user experience (UX), product, and service design. The three big takeaways for me this year are […]

Yesterday, Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) announced its intent to acquire Lattice Engines. Both of us have covered these companies from a number of different perspectives, and we agree that the move makes sense for two primary reasons. First, adding advanced analytics and data management capabilities from Lattice accelerates D&B’s evolution into a comprehensive data platform […]

(Jeremy Vale and Paolo Santamaria contributed to this post.) This month’s Insights Beat focuses on the latest research in our insights-driven playbook; showcases multiple data, analytics, and machine-learning vendor evaluations; and shines a light on B2B analytics techniques. Is Your Data Strategy Lacking? Time To Sound The Alarm In order to compete in the age of […]

Among a series of updates unveiled at Facebook’s F8 Developer Conference on Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg echoed a common refrain: The future is privacy. Fresh memories of Facebook’s mistakes and looming fines are not the only reasons why Zuckerberg’s refrain is relevant; in this cultural moment, consumers are clamoring for brands that build community around specific […]

Customer experience (CX) leaders have successfully elevated and transformed the practice of CX over the past decade, but what’s next? This year’s CX Sydney 2019 Forum will focus on how to drive real, disruptive innovation. I recently caught up with one of our keynote speakers — Teresa Sperti, the outgoing chief marketing, data, and product […]

B2B organizations can fuel growth using customer insights. Read three ways to future-proof your insights capabilities.

In this battle between direct-to-consumer (DTC) startups — cast as the proverbial David — and their large, established brand opponents, victory is not about size or stature; it’s about skillful weaponry. In fact, if one looks at DTC startups’ long-term growth numbers, a scorecard tally suggests that today’s Goliaths will continue to dominate consumer retail […]

Every company has a specific DNA. You may think DNA is the brand or values. But corporate DNA is what makes a company tick, not what the company is. Talent, operations, technology, and data make up your base pairs. How those combine will have a specific outcome for the business, and even the overall sequence […]

It’s early February. Punxsutawney Phil predicted an early spring this year, and there is hope (and warmth) in the air.[i] But it’s not always rosy for you as a data, analytics, and insights leader. You tirelessly toil to get value from your enterprise data and try to apply those insights at scale to impact business […]

I’m often asked the question, “What’s my data worth?” And my immediate (and somewhat provocative) response is “Nothing!” Data is, without a doubt, valuable. But when stored in vaults and locked down, it is not. As the American inventor Thomas Edison asserted, “The value of an idea lies in the using of it.” That sentiment […]

Like most people, I consider November a good time to start thinking about the clean slate that a new year brings. There is lots of room to reflect on one year and get ready for the next one with a bit more, well, “resolve,” so to speak. I’ll be an all-around better person, for sure — […]

Brands’ recklessness has marred algorithms’ success. Customers are fed up with data privacy breaches and “creepy” personalization. And soon, they’ll rebalance the internet. Get the full story at Forrester’s Data Strategy & Insights 2018 Forum. Get a preview on this week’s podcast.

I remember a few years ago when, as enterprise architects, we sat around in the office of the VP of architecture and planned our data strategy on the whiteboard. Replace that clunky warehouse with a modern appliance? Check. Enterprise data model? Of course! The dreaded data governance plan? Yup, but our discussion was about IBM’s […]

Web Summit took place for the third time in Lisbon earlier in November. Over the years, Web Summit has become one of the leading global conferences to discuss everything technology. The large presence of startups and fast pace of presentations across many different stages give Web Summit a particular edge. It is impossible for a single […]

There’s a recurring assumption in discussions about internet of things (IoT) platforms: The platform providers make their money by mining insights from data loaded into their platform. They sell those insights back to the customer who put the data there in the first place and will also sell them to anyone else who can pay. […]

I’m getting more and more psyched about our first-ever Data Strategy & Insights 2018 Forum as I work on the sessions with my colleagues here at Forrester and with our external speakers. The topics are spot on for what organizations need from data and analytics today, and the sessions are going to be inspirational and […]