Data Warehousing and Maneuverability

Businesses must always be prepared to respond creatively to marketplace dynamics. The normal marketplace state is constant upheaval. It is, therefore, obvious that those companies that can navigate with greater alacrity, speed, and dexterity have a distinct advantage. In fact, with speed, dexterity, and alacrity as your allies, you can further exaggerate your advantage by deliberately promoting marketplace mayhem to the benefit of your customers and the detriment of your competitors. 数据挖掘研究院

Companies take two basic roles in engaging the marketplace: 数据挖掘研究院

1. Attrition Fighter: Marketplace supremacy is achieved by taking a strong but fixed position and "slugging it out" for marketplace dominance. Through confrontational marketplace battles and by concentrating superior assets against inferior foes, you win by exhausting the opponent′s will and ability to compete. The optimum situation is to win in a few decisive battles and, by virtue of your proven superior power, deter prospective competitors from stepping into your marketplace and challenging you. An attrition fighter, like a classical heavy-weight boxer, wins by brute superiority of assets and the ability to deliver a crushing and decisive knockout blow.
2. Maneuver Fighter: Marketplace superiority is achieved by staying in a state of perpetual motion. A maneuver fighter continually looks for opportunistic gaps in the marketplace and swiftly moves assets to maximize the opportunity. The maneuver fighter attempts to continually disrupt the marketplace by changing the rules of competition. It is through the actions of movement that advantage is gained. Advantage is best understood as a succession of overlapping temporary advantages rather than a set of sustainable competitive advantages. The maneuver fighter expects that the maneuver process will cause friction and disruption in the ability of opponents to respond. At best, this will eventually lead to a collapse in opponent′s business systems. A maneuver fighter uses speed, flexibility, opportunism, and dexterity to chip away at the edges of the marketplace until the entire marketplace has been taken. In doing so, unlike the attrition fighter, a deliberate attempt is made to avoid expensive, time consuming, and exhausting confrontations with competitors. You win by artfulness and indirection-not by brute force. The great heavy-weight fighter, Mohammed Ali, summed up the defining style of the maneuver fighter when he said "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee."

There is now a global and fundamental marketplace transition occurring from national wars of attrition to global wars of maneuver and successful companies must adapt to this shift. 数据挖掘实验室

Sun Tzu described the eternal character of maneuver warfare when he said:
"Go forth where they do not expect it; attack where they are unprepared." (8) 数据挖掘工具

As advantageous as this is, it is not easy to do. It demands intelligence. Intelligence is both the sense of being smart and having knowledge about your competitors and customers. A maneuver fighter must continually zig and zag. The problem is to decide where and when to zig and zag. Done well, the maneuver fighter will delight customers and drive competitors crazy. Done poorly, the maneuver fighter will inadvertently zig or zag directly into the attrition fighter who will crush her.

Data warehousing is a prerequisite to a maneuver strategy. An infrastructure of knowledge must be available to engage in maneuver fighting. With a solid infrastructure of accessible information that can be manipulated as demanded by swirling times and circumstances, the maneuver fighter can make calculated judgments as to where and when to move. Without such knowledge, a maneuver fighter will make one guess too many and be cornered by the behemoth attrition competitor. 数据挖掘研究院

An instructive example of maneuver is happening in the retail industry. Historically, retailers engaged in push marketing where they purchased large volumes of an item from a supplier and then attempted to convince their customers to buy it. Retailers are now moving to pull marketing wherein they attempt to understand exactly what customers want to buy and provide a desired product assortment at ideal value points. The former doesn′t require much knowledge about one′s customers while the latter requires a great deal. The push retailer stands still and doesn′t need much data while the pull retailer needs precise information to support continuous moving (zigging) and maneuvering (zagging) slightly ahead of customers.

So the final way to understand data warehousing strategically is to understand it as the necessary foundation for changing your business from being a slow and ponderous attrition fighter to an agile and quick maneuver fighter. Attrition fighters stand still. If you′re going to stand still, of what value is knowledge to you? To the contrary, and as illustrated in Figure 9, a maneuver fighter is a business in constant motion. Maneuver fighters win through intelligence; not brute force. In this way, by virtue of knowledge-enabled maneuvering, you act sooner rather than later, you learn rather than repeat, you anticipate rather than react, you know rather than guess, you change rather than atrophy, you exceed rather than satisfy, and ultimately, through the accumulation of rathers, you win rather than lose.

数据挖掘交友