Forgive the homage to the 1964 movie “Dr. Strangelove,” but weall seem to have a love/hate relationship with information. Foryears knowledge was power, information was king and data on its ownwas dumb.

It's a nice sound bite and I've used it many times over theyears, mostly when I am talking with friends about technology,saying if they think what's happening now is amazing, “just wait.”But I was never certain what it was based on. Now, with theincredible leaps in computer speed and capacity, you have towonder: Can this growth just go on forever?

I recently read a short article in Daniel Burrus' newsletter TechnoTrends entitled, “GiantBoost To Moore's Law,” which spoke of a spectacular advancementin computer memory that makes its nearest compatible technologyseem like dust mites next to Mount Everest. IBM has created a newtype of memory that reduces the number of atoms required to storeone bit of data from about 1 million to 12.

That makes the theory of doubling computing power every 18months seem puny. Of course you can't quite yet go out and buy aterabyte drive that will fit on the head of a pin, but it willhappen. Just think what we'll be able to do with RFID chipsthen.

Related: See the slideshow ”9Favorite Apps for Independent Agents” by Laura MazzucaToops.

Like the data of old, digital memory, no matter how large, isonly as valuable as what you can do with it. So moving it aroundand mining data is really where the rubber meets the road.

Another article in the TechnoTrends newsletter about a new “Record-SettingSupercomputer” states that Japanese developers recentlyannounced that “ K,” the world's fastest supercomputer, has becomethe first to surpass the 10 petaflop (10 quadrillion calculationsper second) milestone. And it did so with a record executionefficiency of 93.2 percent.

So not only are we building computers with larger capacity, butthey're faster, too. If you think this is way too theoretical, justremember yesterday's academic exercise becomes today's kid's gameand tomorrow's enterprise tool. That's the progression, too. Gameconsoles are generally the first platform on which new technologygets unveiled. Look at Microsoft's Kinect system for its Xbox 360;articulated hand gestures and body movements will soon be thepreferred method to interface with your computer in the office.Just think of the Tom Cruise 2002 movie, “Minority Report” andyou'll know what I mean (Editor's note: Kinect is now available forWindows).

This is all good, right? For me, this is when the love/hate partcomes in.

My wife is an avid photographer. She loves to spend hours in ourbackyard taking pictures of flowers, insects and the frogs in ourpond to get just the right shot. And she is very good. Back whenfilm was the only format for capturing images, this predilection ofhers was very expensive; buying all that film and developing itmade feeding this need pricey. When our son was born, the costskyrocketed to the point where Walgreens actually gave us abusiness discount on developing just because of the volume.

You can imagine that when we bought our firstdigital camera and no longer needed to deal with film, I was veryhappy. I thought of all the money I would save. Little did I knowthat I was just swapping just one kind of vice for another.

Related: Read the article “Insurance DataStructure: The Next Wave” by Keith Peterson.

Instead of film and developing costs, I had memory cards andstorage devices. On top of that physical expense, there's the timeinvestment to go through the thousands of photos. With the freeaspect of digital, doesn't it make sense if one picture is worth athousand words; wouldn't 100 pictures be worth a million words?That's what my wife thought and so our storage needs went from MBsto GBs to TBs.

Data Curation

Together with numerous entrepreneurs that developed specifiedsoftware, I soon realized that management of all of these photoswas, in some cases, more important than the pictures themselves. Inaddition, I've come to realize, although not implement, that it iscritical to delete unwanted photos early and often and continuallyorganize them.

Without such discipline, data in whatever form it takes istantamount to useless; which brings me back to the love/haterelationship.

Sidebar: Read “The Growth of Data.”

Data Storage

I also painfully learned that storage devices are notinfallible. I have spent far too much money on recovery servicesfor external drives that just stopped “driving.” As a consumer, asfor a lot of small business owners, paying for and managingredundant backup systems can be expensive—not as expensive ashaving to recover lost data, but a shortsighted business ownermight think so. That would be his or her first mistake.

When cloud computing first hit the scene in a significant way,the argument over where the data was being stored and who hadcontrol over it was very prevalent. That soon became much less ofan issue. The increased security, uptime reliability andanywhere/anytime access made those conversations moot.

Then Apple introduced the consumer to iCloud, and suddenlyeveryone wanted his or her piece of the cloud. With the growth inmobile technology and the development of mobile apps and socialmedia, storage and speed of access to data reached new heights.Leading the charge, Apple invested more than $1 billion in datacenter servers and networks to support the development of new appson top of the more than 500,000 apps already in existence, toprovide cloud-based services to its users. And you can bet theother companies are not far behind Apple in taking similarsteps.

So how do you cope? First, independent agents have an advantageover many small businesses because most agency management systemshelp manage the data in a structure that supports effective datamining. But you shouldn't rely solely on your system to do all thework or you might lose sight of what's actually in there.

Related: Read a previous column by Rick Gilman“Password Secrets.”

George Nordhaus, chairman of AgenciesOnline, in one of hisweekly email updates, discusses the “Ten facts every growing agencyneeds to know…about itself:”

1. Do we have an in-depth understanding of our client base?
2. What is the average number of policies we have per account(personal and commercial)?
3. What is the average age of our customers?
4. How long does our average client stay on our books?
5. What are our first-year costs to add a new customer?
6. What is the minimum commission we can take on an account andstill make money?
7. Do we have a documented marketing plan, results traceable onour agency management system?
8. What is the average in new commissions our producers generateeach year?
9. How often do we contact every one of our customers?
10. Do we have a written goal for the next 5 years?

Each of these important questions requires the review of lots ofdata. Without a solid foundation for collecting, managing andmanipulating your agency data, you'll never be able to answer, andyour customers will soon start feeling more like a number and lesslike a person.

So whether you love or hate data, we must all be proactive abouthow we deal with it. It is growing beyond our wildest expectationsand if there's one thing you can be sure of, it will continue. Planfor it to happen. Have a data strategy in place in your agency.Share it with your carriers. Update it frequently because changesin the world of data storage and management happen frequently. Makesure you have a back-up plan that's more than taking home a copy ofthe files every night.