The past two decades have witnessed an incredible acceleration of disruption across industries as ecommerce, digitalization, increasingly demanding customers, and environmental awareness have resulted in an extended period of constant disruption, innovation, and the reinvention of business models.

Most companies now recognize the need to create new business models focused on the customer as the critical input into a company’s long-term strategic planning. Access to rich customer data sets and the ability to make this data actionable are now primary competitive differentiators, explaining why the biggest customer data aggregators, Amazon and Facebook, are so highly valued.

However, success is not guaranteed by access to customer data, but rather from how companies use this data. Companies that are primed to rapidly extract insights from customer data—those that are “digital-ready”—are most likely to succeed. Companies who have rich customer data sets yet lack the ability to extract their value will struggle to compete with more nimble rivals.