by Pat McGrew at Kodak.com

Kodak is passionate about how the power of images and information can be leveraged to help you grow your business. We’ve created the Grow Your Biz blog as a place where we share insights about how Kodak products, services, technologies can enrich the business applications most important to you and your industry. We invite you to share your passions and knowledge about your business, your industry and how the power of images and information have impacted bottom line performance.

In this blog we talk about data-driven communication, but recently I’ve been having a lot of conversations about what that really means. What is data? At its most basic it’s the information in countless files and structures that identify customers and how they interact with us. It includes the information you give every time you fill out an application, but it also includes demographic and psychographic information derived from census data, public records and surveys.

Data is the lifeblood of most companies, but few companies know how to harness it and make it pay its own way. Even the fanciest Customer Relationship Management system or Data Warehouse won’t help unless you understand what data can tell you and how to use that knowledge.

So, here’s the question. What do you know about the data in your data warehouse? What do you know about the data in your CRM system? What do you know about the data you collect from every interaction with your customers?

Now let’s take it a step farther. What commonalities do your customers share? Who are your most profitable customers? What types of customers grow their business with you? What is the profile of your most desirable customer?

These profiles that segment your customers are vitally important to using data to grow your business. They should emerge from analyzing customer addresses and customer buying patterns against the costs of serving them as a customer and your product or service margins. Once you establish what your best customers look like, that should form the profile for the prospects you go after.

Have a story to share?  Drop me a note: pat.mcgrew@kodak.com – we’d love to share your success story!