Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

The great thing about science versus art is there are very clean lines of success. Science can’t tell you if your new logo is helping your sales over the old logo, but it can tell you that a small tweak to your loyalty algorithm yielded a 0.001 percent positive variance.

Two big things stand in the way of this type of system being put in place by large retailers: money and organization. Let’s face it; building a system that can process large amounts of data, and then automate a newly created marketing platform, is not a cheap endeavor.

I doubt that you will find many Chief Data Scientists out there today, but you will in the future. This functional group will likely be separate from the IT team., First, the skills required are highly specialized. And second, if it were to be placed under the CFO (the unfortunate home of many retail IT teams), the program will be doomed, because most financial leaders just don’t have the required sales and marketing mindset that this group will need.

Add to that, many CEOs already have frustration and trust issues with their CIOs over their track records for delivering enterprise technology projects. Putting this much of the company’s financial resources into a project that only Ivy League math majors truly understand the details of is not something they will take on lightly. In my experience, if the CEO or CFO doesn’t understand how it works, they don’t really trust it and, many times, will not do it—regardless of how good the business case looks.

The CMO is not likely to be a supporter of the project, because it’s “not just about the damn numbers, it’s about the feeling.” The CIO is not likely to step up to the biggest project of his or her career (which this will easily be) knowing that the results of the project will easily be measured by all—”Creating and defending a business case is for my business partners to do.”

So you’ve got a business transformational initiative that is super expensive and that no one in the organization is really incented or happy about undertaking at the senior levels. Sounds like a winner, right? In many retail organizations it will be easier to just let inertia take hold and not tackle this type of problem.

Companies like Amazon and Netflix have “embraced their data side,” because it was a foundational part of their business from the start. But if you’ve lived by the “run a commercial and see a 3 percent sales increase” model for as long as you can remember, this transition will be a difficult one. It’s going to take some serious leadership from the top, with a healthy dose of “You’re damn right we are doing this. Get on the bus or start walking” mentality.

But, as I’ve said before, the retailers who get personal with me first will be the ones who get my business, a bond that will be difficult to break. Do you really want to let the other guys create that bond first?

What do you think? If you disagree (or even, heaven forbid, agree), please comment below or send me a private message. Or check out the Twitter discussion on @todd_michaud.