Data Overflow & Democratization: A new era about to begin
Up until a few years ago data was a precious and rare resource wielded by a few....
Today data is abundant, free & manipulated by many.
What does this mean for me you may ask... As a business leader in impacts you because you can save money while using better, richer data. More specifically:
In many countries such as the U.S. you can save over 100,000 dollars a year just by using public data (that is often more reliable than what you would get from a market research agency)
The wealth of data available to you is greater - for example if you generally research your geographies consumption behavior of your category you can now look at all geographies consumption of ANY product category as well as detailed demographics & attitudes
It also means however that you need to be more careful with what you read... Data is only as good as the people that analyze it so it will become increasingly important to train people to interpret & manipulate this data accurately.
Key tools to train your resources on are: SPSS, Tableau & online dashboard / visualization tools.