People and organizations are accustomed to relying upon “on average” guidelines in order to manage their lives and businesses. But “on average” guidelines are severely flawed. In reality, you are either spending too much or spending too little on your individual customers; you are wasting money on over-served customers and leaving money on the table on under-served customers.
However, big data changes that paradigm. We should reject running our businesses using “on average” rules of thumbs. We now have the detailed data and the analytic capability to understand behaviors, tendencies, propensities, characteristics, trends and patterns at the individual level – whether those individuals are humans or machines – and we can leverage these insights to make improved business decisions.