Fusion Forward: Data dynamics in an agile business context

Barry Jennings

Microsoft, the technology company, created new insights off of 'data exhaust' and used new tools and technologies to turn that data into useful information, leveraging traditional qualitative and quantitative tools to enhance new data and give it richer meaning and context.

Microsoft's Customer and Market Research (CMR) department has a grand vision to "build the most impactful and innovative customer and market insights function in the world", and a singular mission of "delivering fact-based customer insights that drive Microsoft's most essential business decisions". Both statements are simple concepts to understand, and are also both extremely difficult to execute while competing in an industry that compels CMR to account for:

  1. Alternative resources: constantly changing (note that we are often one of the key players driving that change);
  2. Speed of business: moving at an increasingly rapid pace;
  3. Data proliferation:...

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