• by Tyler Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_tyler, November 14, 2013

A new study has revealed that real-time marketers might not be so good at the whole real-time thing, after all.

In fact, the CMO Council study gives "Real-Time Delivery of Sales Intelligence and Breaking News" a big, fat "F" for a grade. And it's not even close to "D" range.

Just 9% of B2B marketers say they are getting current customer information in real-time. Nearly half (46%) say they aren't, while 21% say "somewhat," 20% say "working on this," and 4% say they don't know.

In other words, one out of every 10 B2B marketers is getting updated consumer data in real-time. One out of every 20 knows as much about the newness of their data as your dog. I spy a problem.

Let's break away from advanced automation -- meaning automating and delivering information in real-time -- and talk about automation in general for a second. A full 63% of respondents say their customer intelligence systems do not automatically notify sales or support teams about developments. I spy another problem.

"Not only is sales operating in the dark specific to having access to a total view of the customer, but they are also flying blindly without access to real-time intelligence that could mean the difference between an opportunity and a missed quota," The CMO Council report reads.

The problem in delivering real-time insights and intelligence lies in a company's ability to mesh internal structured data with unstructured data, such as news and media commentary or social data, the report reasons.

Perhaps Big Data has gotten so big that it's causing marketers to be slower rather than faster -- a diminishing return of sorts. I would think it's only a matter of time before Big Data is managed more effectively across the board, and eventually in real-time. But at the same time, I can't help but think the results of this survey would have been different had everyone's company been attached to their answers.

The CMO Council conducted a survey on over 230 B2B marketing execs from North America to receive this data. They are offering a free look at the executive summary of the report here.