Vroom Room

Good Morning!

Its Friday, its the Vroom Room, come in make yourself comfortable, we have cappuccino and biscotti, join the conversation.

Back in the day...way back in the day, it was called Big Brother is watching....imagine with the pervasiness of technology how easy it is for big brother to watch over you today and in the future. We were somewhat surprised by the naivete of most folks that were shocked when it became more transparent that big brother is watching.

If you remember from way back in the day when telephones had "party lines" or multiple lines, and other folks could listen in on your conversations, until the private line became more prevalent.

In an age of big data, obvious that "data mining" is discreetly practiced. Obvious too that you should not be surprised at all, or shocked, or taken aback.

An informative article "You Have No Control Over Security on the Feudal Internet"

Have you noticed that many dealers are by now swamped with all sorts of technologies, all sorts of activites that did not exist only a few years ago. You would think that after countless years of technology it would be simpler, easier, more efficient...its not...go figure. 

You have to wonder if dealers do not attend the various seminars, webinars, groups, seeking some sort of magic bullet that does not exist.

Some old cars from the Great South American Challenge.

Big Data

We have been hearing the term "big data" for some time, and often wonder what it implies. Perhaps you are in the same position at times scratching your head about the meaning of big data, analytics, and often accompanied by cloud computing.

Think back for a moment to the advent of spreadsheets, if you are of a certain age you surely remember using Lotus 123 and what you could do with a spreadsheet back in the day. Especially the facility of refining decisions involving data, which were previously tedious, requiring a myriad of manual calculations. 

Lotus 123 was a dark science to most folks back in the day of 5 1/2 inch floppies, and PC's literally slowing down when a spreadsheet was a "little bigger".

The same applies to big data, analytics, and cloud computing, the folks that have a profound understanding of big data have a distinct advantage in a business environment, although we can discuss/debate the quality of some decisions, they surely do have an advantage. 

Think about the amount of data that is available in your business, and the amount of data that is available, and generated outside of your business. Reflect for a moment on who is possibly using the data that is available outside of your business to gain an advantage on you. 

If you are still in the starting blocks of "social media" for your business, someone else competing with you is using "big data" to better grasp what is going on in the social sphere (your customers).

Reflect on this for a moment. 

ABC is trying to grasp the basics of social media, attending conferences, and webinars on the importance and novelty of social media (being a follower). While XYZ is using big data to gain additional insight from the various activities in social media, and how to increase its competitive advantages. Onvious that no one will give you a conference or a webinar on gaining an advantage.

Consider the pundits telling auto dealers that they should have a social media strategy, should have a presence on various platforms (we all know the names), should research what is going on in their market area, should espouse mobile, and so on. 

In the meantime every employee of the dealer has a smart device, most probably is on at least one or several social platforms...think about this for a moment.

Care to share your thoughts...leave a comment.