The Amazon Effect: Why Companies That Need Marketing also Need BI

According to Gartner, by the year 2017 CMOs will outspend CIOs in IT investments. That is a staggering prediction about the evolution of business:  you can't survive today without knowing your customers.  Intimately.

So how did this shift emerge?  Well, for years we've been watching it happen in the biggest consumer market of them all: the internet. The media talks about mega-online retailers like Amazon who are supposedly taking over the marketplace and lessening the competitive capability of other vendors.  The media is missing the real change right in front of them.

Amazon's pricing model is a common reason given for their success.  Pure play retailers can't possibly match Amazon's purchasing power. But as CNN Money confirmed in July 2014 (thanks to a new tool called PriceJump), often Amazon isn't the best deal. So it must be the convenience; free two-day shipping, and even on items that weigh in at nearly a ton? No one can rival that. Yet again, USA Today reiterated in July that their competitive delivery service is nearly a 10 figure pitfall to the internet giant. Despite all this, Amazon is still forging ahead on predictions of being the largest retailer in the world overall. How can this be?

Amazon's primary strength is customer trust that stems from a deep understanding of its buyers. It's also the type of relationship consumers are growing to expect and demand from their suppliers of goods and services. And here is the way Amazon did it: Business Intelligence.  

This initiative was not just a happy accident. James Marcus, Employee #55 at Amazon, in his memoir said that Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder, insisted "the Internet, with its ...