Mike,

The spirit of your blog is so very appropriate and something we hear time and time again within our community. So many organizations caught the wave of big data and analytics and now the latest greatest tech trend, IoT is taking the world by storm. At the end of the day, all of the above is not meant to create an endless abyss of data lakes whereby the data is sortable and searchable like a microfiche (dating myself) at a later date. This data should be scrutinized and segmented in real time creating actionable outputs which can be used to enable cross functional teams enterprise-wide and the collaboration of these teams. There are so many examples of how data from one input can enable many line of business functions, as well as, the collaboration of cross-functional teams. Take for example machine data from connected assets (IoT). This data can enable service departments in terms of capturing a 360 degree view of the customer (empirical customer data), customer relationship data (historical instances in the customer journey), technician training (toolkits to aide in technician efficacy), engineering (taking product failure data and building into the design loop for future product improvement). Imagine a world where service wasn't needed?

The question with respect to data and the enablement of collaboration is how ready is an organization to embrace this? How feasible is it to embark on this transformation? We will be looking at this very topic later this year in a series of research efforts.

Thanks for the blog. Great read.