It All Comes Back To The (Yawn) Data
“I can’t mail the invoices out.”
“We can’t make budget projections.”
“We don’t know…”
“We can’t tell…”
Way back in my Corporate days, I worked for a ginormous company that sold most of one (high-tech, high-dollar) product line through third parties. Unfortunately, once it went to that third party, they had no idea who was actually using the product. This, in a cut-throat market with an ongoing price war with another ginormous company. Market share was everything! Get and hold those customers! (It’s also why both companies ended up laying off a lot of people and losing a lot of money…but that’s another story.) I became a superstar when I, after weeks of slogging through computer print-outs, spreadsheets and field sales reports, came up with the “Top 100″ customer list. What a concept. Having good data. Mind you, this was a multi-billion dollar company who didn’t know the absolutely critical info – who their actual, end-user customers were…because they never set up the right systems.
I was reminded of this recently in working with a nonprofit. Everything – from invoices to member recruitment and retention – seems to come back to the state of the database, which apparently hasn’t actually been updated in at least two years. The good news? It won’t be that hard to fix. The bad news? “Someone” is going to have to do some slogging.
Systems are boring. Systems are tedious. Systems can be a service inhibitor. But, they’re critical (and should be done right the first time, not after your database is a mess). Otherwise, you’d better hope there’s several “someones” in your group or company able to step up and fix things.
P.S. Lack of data or data management systems also shouldn’t be used as an excuse for sitting around, complaining. Get busy and fix the problem. You may have to make some phone calls (like to your customers) or do some digging, but you can keep going.
P.P.S. The ginormous company has now filed for bankruptcy, after years of struggles and financial gyrations.
Related Post: The Boring Bits of Marketing
Tags: marketing, marketing troubleshooting, business planning, systems
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