Context is the key to meeting new challenge of data fluidity

Businesses around the world know that change is inevitable. The thing is - the rate of change is increasing dramatically. Companies are established, acquired and liquidated faster than ever before, and individuals change jobs constantly. In addition, the amount of data generated in all fields has long surpassed our capacity for manual analysis. Forbes calculated that 90% of the world’s data was created in just two years.

As a result, new challenges have arisen for sales, marketing and HR who are struggling to keep up.

A new kind of lead

Quality leads have always been the critical factor in sales, marketing and recruiting. Regardless of the industry or market, if you want to reach truly relevant people - you need their contact details. However, closing a deal today requires much more.

Until recently, businesses were buying raw data in bulk, seeking out as much information, about as many potential clients as possible. This worked because the data and leads were stable and hence the huge amount of time it took to sort, qualify and analyze them was acceptable. A speck of gold was in there, we just needed to sift through the sand.

The key here is ‘data stability’. Nowadays, by the time data is made actionable, it has become outdated and less relevant. Gone are the days when companies existed for a century (remember Kodak? founded 1888) and people kept their jobs for decades. Today, thousands of companies are formed every year and Unicorns aren’t as rare (654 in 2021 vs. 39 in 2013). Most people will have eight different jobs throughout their career, transitioning every five years, on average. What’s more, your target clients may have pivoted to a different sector, migrated to the cloud and totally relinquished all real estate due to a global pandemic in the span of a week.

The result of data becoming fluid is that simple contact details are no longer enough. You need context, both from your internal systems as well as external sources, to generate actionable insights and determine the best path to a sale – and you need it all in real-time.

Businesses that wish to stay relevant have realized that not only are their target decision makers replaced constantly, but the actual market composition is changing daily in tune with shifting organizational needs.

They need to know who’s looking for what today, how to reach them and what is the ideal way to market to them.

In business – It’s all about timing

ZoomInfo, for example, has a platform that collects data from thousands of different sources and contributing networks which is then validated by hundreds of data researchers. Next, advanced ML, AI and NLP engines generate relevant actionable insights.

The beauty of ML is that it can project complex targeting logic onto vast amounts of fluid trigger events hidden in unconventional and unstructured data.

If a company recently relocated - perhaps they need facility services. If a new CTO just joined, this might be the right time to offer IT systems. What if there is an increase in searches for ‘cloud computing’ from a certain domain? You get the idea.

Imagine you’re an HR business specializing in tech recruiting. Precise intel regarding companies that received investments (and are hiring), or have been acquired (leading to position changes), and even about companies that have closed their doors (i.e. a fresh pool of talent) – could be a game changer. accelerated rate of change, it’s time to use technology to focus efforts and resources where they count.

Eyal Shpin is the Senior Vice President of Engineering and Deputy CTO at ZoomInfo