In the British sit-com “The IT Crowd”, a massive corporation has an IT department of three people in its basement. Their phone, which they never answer, always goes directly to a recording that says, simply: “Have you tried turning it off and on again?”Your IT department is probably more helpful than that, but given the massive amounts of internal and external data available to any company these days, few are able to utilize it fully. Jeanette Horan, IBM’s Chief Information Officer, suggests redefining the role of the IT department entirely.Know your dataUse external data gathered from online conversations and outside analysis to inform you of marketplace trends. Use internal data collected from your customers to track specific consumer behaviors.How do we make vast amounts of information consumable and actionable to our business? IT can help sales and marketing put data into the context of the business challenge you’re trying to address.Optimize SalesHow do I optimally deploy...