One of the challenges of bringing any advanced technology to market is that it can sometimes be ahead of customers’ ability to use it. That problem is further compounded when the technology is capable of solving problems clients are not yet aware they have.

As data moves to assume a central role within business in the digital era, its importance to marketing and customer experience professionals has never been greater. But nor has the need to ensure the security of such data.

One of the great benefits of digital advertising has been its inherent measurability. But while digital advertisers have a far easier time of understanding how many eyeballs are witnessing their messages, there is another conundrum that digital technology has yet to prove so adept at solving – causality.

Adopting a freshly minted document and data extraction technology is enabling MYOB to tackle a whopping big customer pain point while improving SMB tax time compliance, its product chief says.

The top analytics leaders in Australia have been named, with JLL, The Iconic and QBE topping the list.

Chris Johnston will take the lead of marketing operations for TEG Digital and Ticketek, after stints with Slingshot Media Ventures as head of digital and data and before that at Carat Australia as head of digital and direct for Woolworths.

“Focus on your customers”, Warren Buffet reportedly said. Savvy marketers take note: The renowned investor’s advice is borne out by the latest CX research from Forrester. According to the analyst firm’s 2018 Australian Customer Experience Index, emotion has a bigger impact on brand loyalty than ease or effectiveness and is the critical piece in becoming a standout CX leader.

Consumers are demanding better, more personalised experiences, and make no distinction between profits, non-profits and educational institutions when it comes to these expectations.

Salesforce has taken a huge leap forward in the data visualisation and analytics space, picking up Tableau for a whopping US$15.7 billion.

​In only a few short months, online weight loss program, SuperFastDiet, has halved its cost per lead (CPL), simply by making better use of its data.

Social media platforms are set to face a commercial reckoning as news media organisations harness the power of customer data with contextual and professional editorial experience, News Corp Australia’s COO, Publishing, and former CMO, Damian Eales, says.

Artificial intelligence (AI) might be the current marketing buzzword, but it shouldn’t be implemented for the sake of it, or be used to replace humans for customer experience (CX). Rather, AI is facilitator for a better CX.

Putting creativity and machine learning into the same sentence might seem like an oxymoron, but it’s only by combining both that brands will harness artificial intelligence for customer engagement success.

There is no shortage of marketplaces to satisfy the appetites of the most data-hungry organisations. But for some, their efforts might be better directed at utilising the data they already have right under their noses.

Data monetisation is no longer nice-to have but an imperative for retailers and increasingly consumer-oriented companies looking to remain competitive.

As consumers, we’re well accustomed to ads from brands ‘following’ us around the Internet, and brands using information we’ve volunteered – or they have gathered – to offer us products and services we may be interested in.

An accusation of using data to discriminate a potential audience is the stuff of nightmares for marketers. However, without the right safeguards and processes in place, it’s a very, very real possibility for most out there.

Analytics is often thought of as a discipline based in numbers. But Sandra Hogan is taking a very human-centric approach to her role as group head of customer analytics at Origin Energy.

Far from it being a retail apocalypse, the proliferation of data and technology has pushed us into a retail renaissance, said Salesforce at Dreamforce this week.

Consumers are a lot less interested in change than organisations are, and it’s brands who listen, rather than talk, to customers who are best placed to find this out and act on it.

Building your organisation’s data muscle successfully is about keeping consumer data safe, not losing it and being ethical with how you apply it to deliver end-user value.