Why data management makes the impossible possible

Posted by Justin Hesser on August 20, 2013

The magic wand question has fueled numerous conversations about business products and services and has served as an effective strategy for sales professionals for a number of years. Essentially, when a business is considering the procurement of a new tool or service to help the company, the individual tasked with selling that product asks "If you had a magic wand, what would you change about your organization?" 

This question is effective in the sales process because there is always an answer. Procurement specialists wouldn't be evaluating new products or services if there wasn't some area of the company they thought needed improvement. The key is finding out exactly what that area is. Often, buyers have needs they feel are unattainable, but if they allow their imaginations to run wild while answering the magic wand question, their providers can get a better idea of what exactly they want to do and this knowledge will help them get closer to providing that solution.

Today, the magic wand question is proving to be even more successful because big data is helping companies do things that were initially impossible prior to the advent of powerful information management systems. An article in Business 2 Community recently addressed this when discussing the popularity of real time data management. Emma Capron, the article's author, set out to ask why real-time big data management has been successful at so many organizations and making the impossible achievable was one of the chief examples.

"Real time data is being applied in a variety of scenarios to allow organizations to be proactive rather than reactive," Capron wrote. "Use cases already include fraud detection, customer sentiment analysis, real-time stock inventory control, scale-out transactions, and real-time bus and train tracking. Many of these would be impossible without a real-time data management (RTDM) framework in place."

Before developing a custom database software system to manage information management, ask yourself the magic wand question. If you could do whatever you wanted at your company, what would it be? What's the one area you wish could be improved, no matter how unrealistic it may seem? Chances are, data will help you get where you want to be. Let FileMaker Pro serve as your magic wand.