71% of Companies Underprepared to Manage Growing Volume of Trade Channel Data May 8, 2012

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A recent IBM study, interviewing more than 1700 chief marketing officers, showed that 71% of companies being underprepared to manage the growing volumes of data becoming available from consumer data channels.

IBM estimates that almost 15 petabytes (15 million gigabytes) of data is generated daily day. A study form the company also found that 49% of consumers use two or more shopping channels during a single purchase. This indicates companies need to fulfill customer expectations across all channels accurately - that is, providing access to the same information, managing inventory, and meeting the promised fulfillment time - regardless of the nature of customer interaction.

IBM said the issue of managing trade channel data extends beyond retail to other industries, including manufacturing.

"Every day, new data is being created in various forms and across various channels," said Tadd Wilson, Senior Managing Consultant for IBM, which offers a Smart Commerce solutions. "Scouring through these channels and gathering data about what customers are doing and what people are saying is very challenging for companies, not least when they don't know when or if an online shopper, a mobile shopper, and a store shopper are the same person."

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