An enterprise must consistently aim to meet the expectations of its customers. Actionable understanding of customer expectations can be enabled by data. Customer profiles, preferences, behavior and sentiment analysis, when accurately contextualized, facilitate an understanding of what an enterprise should perform as the Next Best Action.

The conventional route to creating marketing strategy is to hand over data to statisticians to chew, turn inside out, filter and run through various models until we have actionable insights. In most situations, these 'actionable insights' can be quite exasperating. By the time a business turns "actionable insights" into a tactical response, the customer and market conditions have changed. Such a marketing strategy that has inherent lag, has limitations with respect to ROI as well.

With effective use of data customers can turn into loyal fans. For example, when a mobile customer has a persistent call drop problem, can the service provider deliver customer-related data to the right department within the enterprise for swift corrective action, before customer dissatisfaction gets manifested? If the customer's call data records are analyzed and mapped (against the value of the customer), the provider may be able to immediately send an appropriate free talk time offer to the customer. In this case if the customer makes calls to his or her hometown frequently, the offer could be an appropriate free talk time plan for his or her hometown. Such customer centricity can turn users into loyal customers. Again, remember that the make-good offer was not drawn from a generic promotion or a pre-determined set of options. Rather, it was instantly customized for the specific customer's needs at that point in time.

Consider another example - assume that a customer places an online order for an iPad. The store can look up the customer profile, identify him as a traveling salesman and define the Next Best Action for the store - say, making a discounted offer on device accessories that enhance battery life. There is a strong chance that the customer will buy these accessories, as this ties into his needs.

Enterprises are taking advantage of emerging technologies to create differentiators and bottom line impact. Next Best Action initiatives are in their infancy. This presents a challenge, as roadmaps, tools and techniques are not well-defined. The ideal way to approach technologies that are evolving rapidly is to look for an end-to-end implementation partner who has domain specific expertise as well as proven technological capability. By helping create an intelligent implementation strategy for Next Best Action, the partner can put your business ahead of the curve, providing an immense competitive advantage.