Kevin Bolden, Cisco Systems senior director of enterprise business intelligence
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Take 5
5 Easy Ways to Exploit Data in Lean Times
Cisco’s senior director of enterprise business intelligence shares his perspective.
- Let your data influence strategic priorities. Leveraging current and historical data that tells you about your customers and trends can give you essential insight into where you should concentrate limited resources for best results. Smarter decisions and clearer focus will get you through the current economic storm and prepare you for challenges—and opportunities—ahead.
- Make tough calls. Data analysis improves your line of sight, allowing you to make wiser investments regarding growth and efficiency. As a result, you can make the tough calls about where to cut back versus where to grow your business.
- Get information to decision makers, faster. Day-to-day events influence how a company goes to market, to whom it markets and how it develops products. Having access to data enables you to provide more timely operational and analytical information to the right people at the right time.
- Leverage existing assets. Smart organizations have invested in data systems and applications; now is the time to get the most out of them. With minimal additional resources, you can uncover greater efficiencies and better position yourself to capitalize on long-term growth.
- Prove ROI. It’s especially important to demonstrate return on investment (ROI) to protect your budget and justify expenditures. Few things are as obviously measurable as analytics based upon your data. Take the necessary steps to close the loop between investing in data and showing where it results in cost reduction, customer retention, additional sales or market penetration.
Kevin Bolden has 15 years of technology leadership experience in the high-tech, energy, retail, media and entertainment industries. He works at Cisco’s corporate headquarters in San Jose, Calif.
Photography by Erik Butler