We as an each individual have values, beliefs, ambitions, aspirations, dreams, ideas, thoughts, opinions, plans, emotions, behaviors, habits, desires, needs, and then we have actions associated with all these attributes. The proliferation of various channels, physical, mobile, social, etc. has enabled several communication mediums leaving a digital footprint of these actions, leading to a deluge of data, and that in turn made it possible for someone to characterize the individual and then possibly monetize that characterization.

The increasing commercialization of capabilities to manage and analyze the big data has brought in sight the holy grail of marketing – the capability to target and serve each individual customer at a highly personalized level, called by experts as “extreme personalization” or “micro-segmentation” or “a segment of one” or as I call it the “nano-segmentation” due to its sheer scale at a few billion individuals.

As an Innovation Strategist working closely with the world-class technologists, I see an enormous progress being made by the researchers and the data scientists to build analytics that map the attributes of each individual to qualitative and quantitative models of personality for the businesses to leverage. For now though I see that the correlation of these mappings to the actual personalities is at a lower rate of accuracy, for possibly due to the yet evolving mapping algorithms as well as the sociographic models, the research is gathering a tremendous pace to address the shortcomings.

As businesses increasingly search various B2C ways to leverage these social media analytics in order to serve their customers better and deliver an enhanced experience, I see a significant B2E opportunity via these capabilities for enterprises to achieve growth and profitability – an opportunity to understand each employee at a highly personalized level.

Same as their customers, no two employees of an enterprise are the same, and each have their own attributes, not to mention the variations in the level or degree within a same attribute. Enterprises tend to manage a batch of employees with similar responsibilities in a set pattern and impart them a same kind of training as a group. When businesses can clearly see the benefits in serving their customers at a highly personalized level to transcend the transactional relationship and build a long-lasting loyalty-based relationship, it is time the same businesses deploy the capabilities to serve their employees through effective mentoring, training, and management, with personalized data and insights in hand.

When successfully done so, it invariably would lead to a greater productivity and growth for each employee and the organization as a whole.