It's been said before, many times, but knowledge IS power. However, the kind of knowledge that gives you stregnth and the kind of power you get is changing rapidly. It's no longer sordid secrets about your peers and superiors that will win you favour, but data on your business that provides the power of insight.
Understanding your business - customers, channels, processes, costings - will give you the power to change them for the better, and to make the right decisions quickly.
I remember the mantra taught to me when doing my MBA - "that's all very well, but what do the numbers say?". Without running the numbers, schemes are just schemes. Without running the numbers, you might be able to forecast a profit, but will you go bust due to cashflow first? You might see a market opportunity, but how do you know that it's worth the investment?
Marketers are often seen as creative types, imaginative, flamboyant extroverts - but it's time for us to prove that we can run the numbers too, we can back up what we say or what we predict with cold, hard facts (not just warm and fuzzy feelings). And if we can't? Then we better stay quite until we can work it out.
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