ABSTRACT
One of the visible consequences of the rapid proliferation of electronic transaction processing systems is the ubiquity of business data. It has been estimated that, on average, the volume of data doubles about every eighteen months—not surprisingly, data storage and management expenditures can be quite significant. What is, however, surprising is how comparatively little many organizations spend on “transforming” data into actionable insights—typically, only about 5% of data-related expenditures are allocated to analysis of data. It seems there is a tendency to overlook the obvious, namely, that unless it is utilized to guide the organizational decision making, the expenditures necessitated by the ongoing data capture can create a drag on earnings, rather than contributing to the firm's competitiveness. The reason for that is the relative immaturity of the broadly defined marketing analytics, and more specifically—database analytics.
