Use of Information Technology in Marketing

Information Technology services have always been a tricky issue with Organisations especially with IT always being considered a support strategic issue not a core one. In the current context a lot of it is changing with a lot of companies realizing that their Core Business strategy cannot be separated from their IT strategy
(Gartner report 2007 what CEO’s seek from IT)

What is interesting to note from a pure strategic perspective IT has become a part of a proactive then reactive strategy. Let me try to explain this concept.

Right from the days Peter Ducker wrote his masterpiece ‘concept of a corporation’ the business world has always been too keen on cost management and Information Technology was always looked at as an ideal tool to do so. So whatever came out as a result of this was financial in nature as in mainframes to ensure financial data churning and systems that could aid in cost control.

With the coming of enterprise software and distributed computing which in many ways spelt the end of the domination of companies like IBM, the trend continued but slowly organisations were looking for different aspects of it than just financial management. The use of data bases and records especially like the initiatives taken by Wal-Mart in the early 70’s to keep records of their customers started developing.

It was not until the late 90’s that the concept of IT being used as an offensive strategy for business development and sales came along in the form of Customer Relationship Management. With our current competencies in Data Warehousing technologies we can easily create Meta Data repositories and run Business Intelligence tools to extract patterns to help companies devise their market strategies based not only on the past buying behaviors but other aspects like demographics, preferences and the benefits that people seek from the products they are buying.
That is a young lady buying a particular product say, Soap may seek different benefits from a 60 yr old lady.

Data warehousing and Business Intelligence have turned the Information technology debate on its head where for the first time marketers have realized by using Information technology as an offensive tool they can make inroads into the hearts and minds of their customers.
Some of the leading proponents of this strategy have been Procter and Gamble who have gone ahead and gotten into next generation IT tools like RFID and this is just the beginning if these are things to go by then the future may see IT further integrate itself into the Think -Tank of the Organisations

By
Dr Vikram Venkateswaran
Senior Business Consultant
Computer Sciences Corporation