If the future of business intelligence sounds Orwellian, it’s time to smell the coffee.  Big Brother has been lying on the couch with the remote for some time.  If science fiction is the today’s cultural nightmare, then nostalgia for a simpler life is the cultural daydream.  The conversation on BI can take the high road.  It encourages the virtues of truth and accuracy across business processes. Business practices that rely on crossing your fingers and trusting your gut will simply disappear.  

The analytic marketer, a hybrid go-to super-user, will help steward the evolution of the marketing process toward a deeper understanding of the customer and market relations.  As Messenger says, “the art of marketing will be in the way marketers understand and satisfy customers better than the competition.” 

One-to-one marketing demands meaningful encounters with individuals.  These encounters can gain force by aligning with local realities, such as the natural surroundings, religious communities, history, cultural assets, and recreational opportunities.  Emmott points out, “the paradox of the global market is that you actually need to gain local knowledge about your customers, the regional nuances, the local supply chain, and things that shape the demographics.”  Actionable business intelligence begins with local truths. 

If this topic seems to be a stratospheric swirl of technology, information, culture, philosophy, commerce, it should.  As Jeanette Slepian, the president of BetterManagement says, “the future is all about convergence.”