Fad? Expire?
CRM was a fad. Gabillions invested in realtime reaction. Needed to totally change your business model to use it.
SAP was a fad. Need to reengineer your operations and then you found out (if you got it right) you were exactly as efficient as your competitors, never any better.
Marketing data warehousing is NOT a fad. It merely speeds up and automates a large portion of what the marketers and bean counters were already doing. Figure out who is buying what, and correlate it to what amount of what type of advertising drove them to it. The cost is trivial compared to the other two, and the payback is easily matched against the marketing dollars saved by NOT going after the low responders.
Big brother IS watching. You may not like it, but at least I'm only trying to sell you stuff, not have you registered by the police. And if you really don't want it, and I have information to that effect, there is LESS a chance of my clients bothering you.
BO is just a tool. To be used well, the person should have a lot of knowledge on math and stats, plus some industry info, plus some general business experience.
Hmmm.
Who here knows stats, math, and will be free in a month or 2? Hmmm.
