The AI revolution will affect working life and business much more broadly than we can currently estimate. Yet decisions to invest in AI projects are still too often driven by rough, high-level assumptions about potential cost and time savings from deployment.

We have been working on some very interesting – and challenging – data projects lately. Underlying many of these projects is our customer organisation's desire to utilise AI either in their sales and marketing operations, or in business development, reporting and analytics.

Mapping out AI opportunities is heavily dependent on data, so we always kick things off by getting to know our customers’ data systems as well as how they collect and use that data.

We have instigated many fascinating conversations, witnessed moments of grand discovery and cleared up a number of misconceptions during these projects. I'll share a few examples to drive home why it’s worth talking about your data needs and goals out loud, often, and with a wider team.

This article is part of a series on strategic marketing. First, I discussed what strategic marketing is and how it differs from traditional marketing. Next, I opened up the range of things that can be included in a strategic marketing toolbox. The focus of this, the third and final part of the series, is to concretise the usefulness of the approach in terms of business value.

This is the second part in our series of articles on strategic marketing. If you haven't read Part 1 – What is strategic marketing and how does it differ from traditional marketing? – you should read it either before or after this article.

Why we are committed to strategic marketing because by investing in customer centricity, building customer insights and leveraging customer data, we help our clients achieve the best value for their marketing investment.

In our view, a strategy approach to marketing is about being systematic: it is about designing your campaigns and selecting your channels based on the needs and habits of your target group.

In this series of articles, we look at the strategic marketing from different angles: explore the core concept, what it can include, and why it is a sound business decision.

We do a lot of customer projects that focus on utilising customer data, whether it's marketing, improving the customer experience, measuring performance or developing the business as a whole.

And while leveraging customer data may sound obvious (Doesn't everyone do it? What else would you do with it?!), the topic is ultimately surprisingly complex.

We have been talking about improving customer experiences almost non-stop for the last few years. And the subject will not be exhausted for a while. The most striking observation we have made in various discussions with our stakeholders is how narrowly the topic is often viewed.

I will, once again, attempt to open up our thinking in case it sparks new ideas in others.

All ways and means of improving customer experience are of course good and valuable, but we believe that real benefits are achieved when development is holistic, continuous and goal-oriented. In this article, I will explain what I mean by this and you might need to adjust the direction of CX development in your organisation.