Informatica Perspectives

Generational bulges can have a profound impact on attitudes, culture, and opportunities as they move through organizations. I remember how Dr. Seymour Wolfbein, a business professor at my alma mater, Temple University, connected the dots between the advance of the hefty baby boom generation and management priorities, as members of this group crowded into organizations with their large numbers and new attitudes.

Now, baby boomers are the establishment, and their offspring, another large generation born between 1977 and 2001, is setting a new agenda for business — with profound implications for enterprise data management.In an article in the latest edition of Teradata Magazine, I described the changes organizations should expect from this generation, alternately referred to as "Generation Y" or the "Millennials." The needs and demands of this generation are likely to be felt up and down the hierarchy, and enterprise data managers will be among the first to feel the effects.

First of all, some of the stereotypes about the Millennials, most of who are in their teens and 20s, are true. These are young people who spend a great deal of their time online, Twittering from cell phones and posting messages on Facebook. In essence, they are almost always connected.

What does this mean for businesses? For starters, Millennials are accustomed to real-time information anytime and anywhere. They were raised on the Internet, and see global networking as part of their daily lives and don't pay much attention to formal hierarchies or communication channels.

They will impact businesses in at least two ways: as consumers and as employees. I spoke with Ari Banerjee, director of enabling technologies for Yankee Group, who pointed out that meeting this new generation's expectations as consumers will require more emphasis on enabling back-end systems to deliver analytics that can better meet their demands. Organizations must analyze and respond to transactions in near real-time, as customers browse and make decisions‚ for example, while shopping for a new cell phone on a Web site. "Most of the time, they make impulse buys. You need the mechanism or the medium to act on and monetize that impulse." And because there are no "normal business hours" anymore, companies need to react whenever such opportunities arise.

As employees, this generation may be an enterprise's greatest asset as it cultivates the younger market. "Organizations that enable digital natives with technology will achieve a competitive advantage in some sectors," says Gartner's David Gootzit. In my chat with Gootzit, he observed that the democratic construct of social networking technologies is influencing management styles as well. "Across the board, they view organizations in general as needing to be more flat. If you think about social networking, there's no hierarchy. They connect with whomever they can. And if they accept the connection, you're peers." At one marketing firm, the CEO met with some new hires to welcome them to the organization, Gootzit recounts. Within hours, he had received messages from some of the younger employees offering suggestions and complaints. "They thought nothing of bucking the traditional corporate chain of command," he says.

Millennials are also accustomed to having information instantaneously, or quickly accessible via online search. When they enter the workplace, they are often frustrated with slower legacy systems. They have to construct queries‚ or worse, wait days for the IT department to build reports, for the information they need.

Do companies have the technology and wherewithal to satisfy the demand for instantaneous data and information? A recent Accenture study, "Millennials at the Gates," observes that Millennials "are now bringing those expectations into the workplace‚ and turning IT policies upside down in the process." The Accenture study finds a disconnect between enterprise technology and how young workers want to use technology and collaborate in the workplace. "The implications for enterprise IT organizations are potentially significant," the report concludes. "As Millennials begin to exert more influence in the workplace, IT leadership teams will have to find a way to adapt their policies and procedures to accommodate the new technology these younger workers are demanding. And they must do so without putting the enterprise at risk."