http://media-science.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Rabbit-3.png"> class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-1447" title="Rabbit 3" src="http://media-science.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Rabbit-3-300x189.png" alt="Rabbit 3 300x189 Rabbit. Headlights. Data." width="300" height="189" />So those of us in the data industry are beside ourselves at the new opportunities presented by the rise of the business user. They’ve been to the conferences, they’ve heard the buzzwords (Hadoop = Triple Word Bonus) and they know they _should_ be executing a plan to ‘put data at the heart of their business’. Sounds great huh!? Wrong…

Well, not wrong exactly, but not wholly great either.

We meet with CEO’s and CMO’s all the time and what we see is less ‘exalted glee at the opportunity’ and more ‘sheer terror’ at knowing they _should_ do something but what and where the heck to start. Truly rabbits in the headlights.

These people need help, and not just the sort of help that is sales masquerading as help. Real help.

So how do we, in the industry, meet this need?

Firstly, don’t sell ahead of the market. Don’t ram a bunch of features they don’t understand down their neck. Sure you’re tool can apply bayesian evidential probability…blah blah blah. They’re not listening, you lost them at ‘b’.

We have found that the business user is really just getting started on this journey, and they want to take baby steps. The common theme that we encounter is ‘I just want my data in one place’. This is enough of a breakthrough for them today. So save up that tool chest of features for the future, take them on the journey gently, one step at a time.

They will thank you for it.

Richard

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