Dive Brief:

• A new report from Bluewolf found that 76% of companies surveyed are challenged to make sense of data that they collect from services such as Salesforce. 
• The study also found that more than two-thirds of companies that use Salesforce will invest in analytics offerings to address this issue in the next year.
• Salesforce's yearly summit, Dreamforce, will be held next week.
   

Dive Insight:

Bluewolf, a business consulting firm that focuses on the cloud, recently released its fourth annual "The State of Salesforce" report, which surveyed more than 1,500 Salesforce customers. The survey found most companies still need help when it comes to making sense of data they collect. A total of 76% of those surveyed say they need help manipulating data in order to derive business insights from it.

"Today's customers demand intimacy and a personalized experience across all channels," Adam Bataran, senior director of Analytics for Bluewolf, told FierceCIO. "Leading enterprises realize that their ability to collect customer information, transform it into valuable insight and deliver improved human actions provides greater engagement and a competitive edge."

In the report, Bluewolf said companies looking for help turning data into valuable insight can turn to vendors for help or employ a variety of best practices in data management to improve data effectiveness. As the amount of data continues to grow for most organizations, finding ways to harness it and turn it into actionable data becomes increasingly important.