A discovery call with Santa

I like having conversations with people. It’s more fun than doing sales and marketing, and usually leads to better outcomes.

To that end, I have a link where anyone can book some time in my diary for a quick chat. I don’t always know what to expect…

Client confidentiality usually means I can’t share too much, but it turns out that Santa is generous kind of person so he let me tell you about some of the ideas we discussed.

Understand what data you have got

Santa’s organisation has got legacy data going back centuries. The old stuff is stored offline but some of it’s been scanned. For the last few years, everything’s digital.

There’s a discussion to be had about what data he should be holding onto, and how to ensure that he complies with GDPR and its international equivalents; there’s also a historic value to the records.

First though, we need to consider cataloguing the systems and data sets that they have. Then we can consider where the value is.

Evaluate the use of Generative AI

Santa’s no different to the rest of us. He loves ChatGPT and can see Gen AI making a massive difference to his operations, especially when you consider all that legacy data.

He needs to be careful about over-reliance on Gen AI though. The reputation of Santa relies on getting the right toys to the right children; and any mistakes that occur through relying on a SantaLLM could have a massive reputational impact, which could easily be exploited by rivals such as Amazon.

Whilst Santa should definitely be investigating Gen AI, I’m recommending that he proceeds slowly and with an abundance of caution.

Beneath it all is Data Quality

Santa relies on knowing who each child is, and where they live; together with an understanding of the requested items, along with constraints such as budget and age-restrictions.

Strong validation on data entry helps here, along with checks for inconsistencies. The reliability of the data can be furthered strengthened by acquiring third party data sets of name and address data.

The power of Master Data Management

A known issue comes from the cheeky kids who submit multiple requests under different versions of their name. He’s also found some adults who try and game the system by amending their age so they remain fifteen years old. Again.

By bringing together customer data from multiple sources and over previous years, we can build a “golden record” so we can understand each individual person, their relevant data, and what items they have received over the years.

Decision Intelligence - the thing that most people don’t know about yet

Santa was already aware of the power of dashboards to analyse his data so he could make better decisions. News to him was the new wave of Decision Intelligence tools which not only report on the data, but can make recommendations on the next best action.

As we wrapped up the call, I asked Santa if he could give me the gift of bringing me lots of new and interesting clients to work with.

He said that wasn’t possible because

• I’m too old

• He’s a fictional character

But he did suggest that I ask all my friends and contacts to do that instead, and to let people know that if they click https://www.datazed.co.uk/get-in-touch then they too could have an interesting conversation with me.

Do dreams come true?

Have a wonderful week,
Charles

P.S. On 31 December, I’ll be picking one subscriber out to receive a bottle of wine from me (UK addresses only). I probably shouldn’t share that here because you’ll be thinking that getting me more subscribers lessens your chance of winning; but think how happy your friends would be to not only get a reasonably interesting email, but to also get something to drink at the same time.

Don’t forget!

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