This month's installment of Cutter Benchmark Review is the fifth effort in our yearly series on IT trends and technologies for the coming year. As you know if you have been following CBR, at the beginning of every year we ask our practicing and academic contributors to take stock of current trends. Based on our benchmarking survey of investment priorities, we ask them to explain the results and extrapolate some guidelines for our readers on how to tackle the new year in the IT shop.

• Read the introduction

Most organizations realize that customer data has significant value. Yet, with the amount of customer data proliferating, and with customers becoming increasingly more discriminating, the ability to harness the value of customer data is becoming a crucial skill. How to extract value from the heaps of data available is a process not without challenge.

AN ACADEMIC PERSPECTIVE
Dorothy E. Leidner, Randall W. and Sandra Ferguson Professor of Information Systems, Baylor University (USA)

A VIEW FROM THE FIELD
Thomas H. Murphy, Senior VP and CIO, AmerisourceBergen

• View the editorial calendar

Get practical tips, expert advice, and qualified analysis in Cutter's weekly E-Mail Advisors. The Cutter Edge is a FREE service available to qualified IT and business professionals. The Agile Project Management, Business Intelligence, Business-IT Strategies, Trends, and Enterprise Architecture E-Mail Advisors offer four-week trial subscriptions to qualified professionals.