The quarterly publication of the International Legal Technology Association
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/230349
Peter Ozolin is the co-founder, CEO and Chairman of Manzama, Inc., where he leads the company's strategy and vision. Peter has published numerous articles and presented at nationwide conferences and tradeshows. Contact him at peter@manzama.com. It wasn't long ago that those of us charged with making sense of vast amounts of digital information found ourselves confronting gigabytes of data, an amount that once seemed beyond comprehension. Things haven't gotten better. The universe of digital information has swelled to encompass new terminology. Forget gigabytes or even terabytes. Now we're talking exabytes and zettabytes. To further complicate the situation, data — or what's come to be called "big data" — are being generated and stored in more forms and in more places than ever before, and these data sets far exceed the boundaries and sizes of normal processing capabilities. This past year we've seen significant breakthroughs in how we can utilize big data for business development efforts. WADING THROUGH THE NOISE The preponderance of data has made traditional approaches of capturing, managing and ultimately integrating data into business practices less pragmatic and less efficacious. Considering how an entity might manage its business development/sales efforts, the old model might go something like this: The sales force/business development staff collect customer data from various internal sources like the CRM, billing, customer service and experience management systems. These are updated and analyzed on a quarterly or semiannual basis, perhaps with the assistance of outside analysts. Historical data points yielded in this analysis dictate distribution of the sales force and allocation of resources across sales regions, and sales reps (and any channel partners) are assessed relative to other reps (and channel partners). Peer to Peer 47