Introduction
To have a competitive edge a company needs to have a vision. A vision of who it is, what it stands for and where it is going. This vision is what should be translated into a business strategy, which serves to remind a company of its purpose. In an increasingly competitive global economy fuelled by technological advances, there is a seemingly prevalent idea that the customer is key and the use of marketing data is therefore crucial to a company’s success. However, the focal point is how a company can ensure their exposure to data is to be informed, not driven by data; and how the data can be used to the company’s advantage in order to achieve long term goals.
Business Strategy
Johnson et al. (2008), state that strategy is the direction and scope of an organisation over the long term. Without a strategy in place to refer to, it is easy for a business to become overly focussed on the day-to-day business activities, temporarily losing sight of the goals and aspirations they have set for the business. This loss of vision can in turn lead to strategic drift, a concept explained by Handy (1989), as being the cause for businesses becoming uncompetitive in their respective environments and ultimately failing as a result of being too slow to respond to external trends and losing touch with customers.
One of the main causes for strategic drift is thought to be substantial changes in technology, which have been rapid across the span of the information age. Narayanan & Fahey (1986), highlight that as the external environment changes, business strategies must be modified to take account of newly emerging opportunities and threats and that businesses must be proactive in responding to such changes in order to maintain competitive advantage. This notion is only proving to be ever increasingly important as businesses now operate in an environment where they are