A couple of years ago, we started working with a fortune 100 retail company in the US. They had invested 100's of millions of dollars towards data management with no measurable ROI. Basic questions like "how many customers do I have?" were not answered accurately; marketing and personalization was being driven by low quality data that was a week old; frustrated marketing teams created their own shadow solutions to address their team's needs.

A Common Need

If this sounds familiar to you, you are not alone. 80% of data modernization initiatives failed to deliver positive ROI for companies which in some cases have invested over $500M to solve this problem (McKinsey). Data today is HARD. The biggest reason for this is complexity:

1. Complexity in architecture
2. Complexity created by data silos
3. Complexity of existing data products
4. Complexity of the organization

The end result: years spent addressing symptoms of data complexity instead of the disease.

To quote the American anthropologist Joseph A. Tainter, "…in the evolution of a society, continued investment in complexity as a problem-solving strategy yields a declining marginal return". This applies to data just as it applies to society in general.

There Has to Be a Better Way

We founded The Modern Data Company (TMDC) because we believe that data 1) doesn’t have to be hard, 2) can be done right, and 3) can deliver immense value to organizations at a fraction of the current complexity and cost.

Data is a 30% tech problem and 70% people problem. A successful data company can’t be built without immense empathy towards the customer and the people issues within customer organizations. TMDC is a value-driven company with empathy as a core attribute. These values are what will enable us to deliver consistent value and satisfied customers.