Houston expert breaks down how B2B companies should leverage data for growth

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How you can use your data to improve your marketing efforts. Photo via Getty Images

When focusing on revenue growth in business to business companies, analyzing data to develop and optimize strategies is one of the biggest factors in sales and marketing success. However, the process of evaluating B2B data differs significantly from that of B2C, or business to consumer. B2C analysis is often straightforward, focusing on consumer behavior and e-commerce transactions.

Unlike B2C, where customers can make a quick purchase decision with a simple click, the B2B customer journey involves multiple touchpoints and extensive research. B2B buyers will most likely discover a company through an ad or a referral, then navigate through websites, interact with salespeople, and explore different resources before finally making a purchasing decision, often with a committee giving input.

Because a B2B customer journey through the sales pipeline is more indirect, these businesses need to take a more nuanced approach to acquiring and making sense of data.

The expectations of B2B vs. B2C

It can be tempting to use the same methods of analysis between B2C and B2B data. However, B2B decision-making requires more consideration. Decisions involving enterprise software or other significant business products or services investments are very different from a typical consumer purchase.

B2C marketing emphasizes metrics like conversion rates, click-through rates, and immediate sales. In contrast, B2B marketing success also includes metrics like lead quality, customer lifetime value, and ROI. Understanding the differences helps prevent unrealistic expectations and misinterpretations of data.

Data differences with B2B

While B2C data analysis often revolves around website analytics and foot traffic in brick and mortar stores, B2B data analysis involves multiple sources. Referrals play a vital role in B2B, as buyers often seek recommendations from industry peers or companies similar to theirs.

Data segmentation in B2B focuses more on job title and job function rather than demographic data. Targeting different audiences within the same company based on their roles — and highlighting specific aspects of products or services that resonate with those different decision-makers — can significantly impact a purchase decision.

The B2B sales cycle is longer because purchases typically involve the input of a salesperson to help buyers with education and comparison. This allows for teams to implement account-based marketing and provides for more engagement which increases the chances of moving prospects down the sales funnel.

Enhancing data capture in B2B analysis

Many middle-market companies rely heavily on individual knowledge and experience rather than formal data management systems. As the sales and marketing landscape has evolved to be more digital, so must business. Sales professionals can leave and a company must retain the knowledge of the buyers and potential buyers. CRM systems not only collect data, they also provide the history of customer relationships.

Businesses need to capture data at all the various touchpoints, including lead generation, prospect qualification, customer interactions, and order fulfillment. Regular analysis will help with accuracy. The key is to derive actionable insights from the data.

B2B data integration challenges

Integrating various data sources in B2B data analysis used to be much more difficult. With the advent of business intelligence software such as Tableau and Power BI, data analysis is much more accessible with a less significant investment. Businesses do need access to resources to effectively use the tools.

CRM and ERP systems store a wealth of data, including contact details, interactions, and purchase history. Marketing automation platforms capture additional information from website forms, social media, and email campaigns. Because of these multiple sources, connecting data points and cleansing the data is a necessary step in the process.

When analyzing B2B data for account based marketing (ABM) purposes, there are some unique considerations to keep in mind. Industries like healthcare and financial services, for instance, have specific regulations that dictate how a business can use customer data.

Leveraging B2B data analysis for growth

B2B data analysis is the foundation for any sales and marketing strategy. Collecting and using data from multiple sources allows revenue teams to uncover gaps, trends, and opportunities for continued growth.

Acknowledging what’s different about B2B data and tracking all of the customer journey touchpoints is important as a business identifies a target market, develops an ideal customer profile, and monitors their competitors. Insights from data also single out gaps in the sales pipeline, use predictive analytics for demand forecasting, and optimize pricing strategies.

This comprehensive approach gives B2B companies the tools they need to make informed decisions, accelerate their sales and marketing efforts, and achieve long-term growth in a competitive market.

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Libby Covington is a Partner with Craig Group, a technology-enabled sales and marketing advisory firm specializing in revenue growth for middle-market, private-equity-backed portfolio companies.

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Every situation is unique and deserves a one-of-the-kind data management plan, not a one-size-fits-all solution. Graphic by Miguel Tovar/University of Houston

Houston research: Why you need a data management plan

Houston voices

Why do you need a data management plan? It mitigates error, increases research integrity and allows your research to be replicated – despite the “replication crisis” that the research enterprise has been wrestling with for some time.

Error

There are many horror stories of researchers losing their data. You can just plain lose your laptop or an external hard drive. Sometimes they are confiscated if you are traveling to another country — and you may not get them back. Some errors are more nuanced. For instance, a COVID-19 repository of contact-traced individuals was missing 16,000 results because Excel can’t exceed 1 million lines per spreadsheet.

Do you think a hard drive is the best repository? Keep in mind that 20 percent of hard drives fail within the first four years. Some researchers merely email their data back and forth and feel like it is “secure” in their inbox.

The human and machine error margins are wide. Continually backing up your results, while good practice, can’t ensure that you won’t lose invaluable research material.

Repositories

According to Reid Boehm, Ph.D., Research Data Management Librarian at the University of Houston Libraries, your best bet is to utilize research data repositories. “The systems and the administrators are focused on file integrity and preservation actions to mitigate loss and they often employ specific metadata fields and documentation with the content,” Boehm says of the repositories. “They usually provide a digital object identifier or other unique ID for a persistent record and access point to these data. It’s just so much less time and worry.”

Integrity

Losing data or being hacked can challenge data integrity. Data breaches do not only compromise research integrity, they can also be extremely expensive! According to Security Intelligence, the global average cost of a data breach in a 2019 study was $3.92 million. That is a 1.5 percent increase from the previous year’s study.

Sample size — how large or small a study was — is another example of how data integrity can affect a study. Retraction Watch removes approximately 1,500 articles annually from prestigious journals for “sloppy science.” One of the main reasons the papers end up being retracted is that the sample size was too small to be a representative group.

Replication

Another metric for measuring data integrity is whether or not the experiment can be replicated. The ability to recreate an experiment is paramount to the scientific enterprise. In a Nature article entitled, 1,500 scientists lift the lid on reproducibility, “73 percent said that they think that at least half of the papers can be trusted, with physicists and chemists generally showing the most confidence.”

However, according to Kelsey Piper at Vox, “an attempt to replicate studies from top journals Nature and Science found that 13 of the 21 results looked at could be reproduced.”

That's so meta

The archivist Jason Scott said, “Metadata is a love note to the future.” Learning how to keep data about data is a critical part of reproducing an experiment.

“While this will be always be determined by a combination of project specifics and disciplinary considerations, descriptive metadata should include as much information about the process as possible,” said Boehm. Details of workflows, any standard operating procedures and parameters of measurement, clear definitions of variables, code and software specifications and versions, and many other signifiers ensure the data will be of use to colleagues in the future.

In other words, making data accessible, useable and reproducible is of the utmost importance. You make reproducing experiments that much easier if you are doing a good job of capturing metadata in a consistent way.

The Big Idea

A data management plan includes storage, curation, archiving and dissemination of research data. Your university’s digital librarian is an invaluable resource. They can answer other tricky questions as well: such as, who does data belong to? And, when a post-doctoral student in your lab leaves the institution, can s/he take their data with them? Every situation is unique and deserves a one-of-the-kind data management plan, not a one-size-fits-all solution.

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This article originally appeared on the University of Houston's The Big Idea. Sarah Hill, the author of this piece, is the communications manager for the UH Division of Research.

Here's your university research data management checklist. Graphic by Miguel Tovar/University of Houston

Tips for optimizing data management in research, from a UH expert

Houston voices

A data management plan is invaluable to researchers and to their universities. "You should plan at the outset for managing output long-term," said Reid Boehm, research data management librarian at University of Houston Libraries.

At the University of Houston, research data generated while individuals are pursuing research studies as faculty, staff or students of the University of Houston are to be retained by the institution for a period of three years after submission of the final report. That means there is a lot of data to be managed. But researchers are in luck – there are many resources to help navigate these issues.

Take inventory

Is your data…

  • Active (constantly changing) or Inactive (static)
  • Open (public) or Proprietary (for monetary gain)
  • Non-identifiable (no human subjects) or Sensitive (containing personal information)
  • Preservable (to save long term) or To discard in 3 years (not for keeping)
  • Shareable (ready for reuse) or Private (not able to be shared)

The more you understand the kind of data you are generating the easier this step, and the next steps, will be.

Check first

When you are ready to write your plan, the first thing to determine is if your funders or the university have data management plan policy and guidelines. For instance, University of Houston does.

It is also important to distinguish between types of planning documents. For example:

A Data Management Plan (DMP) is a comprehensive, formal document that describes how you will handle your data during the course of your research and at the conclusion of your study or project.

While in some instances, funders or institutions may require a more targeted plan such as a Data Sharing Plan (DSP) that describes how you plan to disseminate your data at the conclusion of a research project.

Consistent questions that DMPs ask include:

  • What is generated?
  • How is it securely handled? and
  • How is it maintained and accessed long-term?

However it's worded, data is critical to every scientific study.

Pre-proposal

Pre-proposal planning resources and support at UH Libraries include a consultation with Boehm. "Each situation is unique and in my role I function as an advocate for researchers to talk through the contextual details, in connection with funder and institutional requirements," stated Boehm. "There are a lot of aspects of data management and dissemination that can be made less complex and more functional long term with a bit of focused planning at the beginning."

When you get started writing, visit the Data Management Plan Tool. This platform helps by providing agency-specific templates and guidance, working with your institutional login and allowing you to submit plans for feedback.

Post-project

Post-project resources and support involve the archiving, curation and the sharing of information. The UH Data Repository archives, preserves and helps to disseminate your data. The repository, the data portion of the institutional repository Cougar ROAR, is open access, free to all UH researchers, provides data sets with a digital object identifier and allows up to 10 GB per project. Most most Federal funding agencies already require this type of documentation (NSF, NASA, USGS and EPA. The NIH will require DMPs by 2023.

Start out strong

Remember, although documentation is due at the beginning of a project/grant proposal, sustained adherence to the plan and related policies is a necessity. We may be distanced socially, but our need to come together around research integrity remains constant. Starting early, getting connected to resources, and sharing as you can through avenues like the data repository are ways to strengthen ourselves and our work.

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This article originally appeared on the University of Houston's The Big Idea. Sarah Hill, the author of this piece, is the communications manager for the UH Division of Research.

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Energy AI company opens first U.S. office at Houston’s the Ion

Building on its partnership with Houston-based oilfield services provider Halliburton, energy-sector AI company Shape Digital recently opened an office at The Ion. It’s the company’s first U.S. location.

Shape Digital’s workforce in Houston includes employees specializing in tech support, business development and client services. The company’s local hiring projections and headcount weren’t available. The new office will be located within Industrious at the Ion, according to Rice Alliance.

A key driver of the new Houston office: The company forecasts North America will account for more than 20 percent of its business in 2027.

“North America is a critical market for industrial innovation, and Houston sits at the center of companies driving that progress,” Caio Sene, vice president of client services at Shape Digital, said in a release. “Growing our presence here allows us to work alongside operators as they look for practical ways to turn existing operational data into clear recommendations for what to do next.”

Shape Digital, which also has offices in Singapore and Brazil, develops decision-making platforms for the oil and gas sector.

The Ion District office gives Shape Digital a presence close to Halliburton’s headquarters. In May, the two companies forged a partnership to combine Halliburton’s Digital Field Solverdecision-making system with Shape Digital’s AI portfolio.

Shape Digital layers AI software atop existing operations data rather than replacing legacy systems or adding new software.

The company’s suite of AI agents draws on more than 200 operations-monitoring algorithms, continually learning from company and industry data. The suite comprises four products: Shape Aura, Shape Lighthouse, Shape Lumen and Shape Reef.

Shape Digital says that by working with a customer’s existing operations data, it can deliver ROI in less than two months without any additional investment in equipment or infrastructure.

The company is a 2021 spinoff of Japan-based Modec. Modec builds, owns, and operates floating offshore oil and gas production facilities. Its Modec America subsidiary is based in Houston.

Meet the esteemed judges for the 2026 Houston Innovation Awards

Meet The Judges

Editor's note: Judging is now underway for the 2026 Houston Innovation Awards, and it's time to meet the decision makers.

Our 2026 judging panel comprises past award winners who represent a variety of industries and areas of expertise. They are joined by InnovationMap's interim editor. All are deeply engaged in the Houston innovation ecosystem.

Our judging panel will review all nominee applications submitted across 10 prestigious categories. They will determine the 2026 finalists in all categories, and they will select the winners in all but one category — our people's choice award for Startup of the Year.

The sixth annual Houston Innovation Awards program will be presented in an all-digital format in 2026. We will announce this year's finalists and feature their stories throughout our special editorial series this fall. Then, stay tuned as we reveal the 2026 Houston Innovation Awards winners on InnovationMap.com in mid-November.

Sagar Dalal, Fervo Energy, 2025 Scaleup of the Year

Sagar Dalal

Sagar Dalal serves as chief of staff at Fervo Energy, a company pioneering the commercialization of next-generation geothermal power. In this role, he helps translate the CEO’s vision and priorities into execution, leading cross-functional strategic initiatives that support the company’s growth and operations.

Dalal brings nearly eight years of experience in structural engineering and project management from his time at Thornton Tomasetti and Tesla, where he engineered and built a wide range of infrastructure projects ranging from stadiums to manufacturing facilities. He holds an MBA from Stanford University and an MS in Civil Engineering from Texas A&M University. He is also a licensed professional engineer.

Aaron Fitzgerald, Mars Materials, 2025 Minority-founded Business of the Year

Aaron Fitzgerald

Aaron Fitzgerald is a three-time founder and carbon removal entrepreneur focused on reimagining how we make things. As the CEO of Mars Materials, he leads a team working to commercialize technologies that sequester captured carbon into industrial supply chains.

His vision for a defossilized future is shaped by a unique path through both policy, including a tenure in the United States Senate, and deep carbontech, with fellowships at The Lewis Latimer program, Breakthrough Energy, Prime Coalition, and Carbon 180.

Tatiana Fofanova, Koda Health, 2025 Health Tech Business of the Year

Tatiana Fofonova

Tatiana Fofanova, PhD, is the co-founder and CEO of Koda Health, an AI-enhanced patient decision support platform designed to make advance care planning (ACP) scalable, accessible, and patient-centered for patients with serious illness.

After earning her PhD in Translational Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, she joined Texas Medical Center (TMC) as a Founder-in-Residence. It was there that she and her co-founders identified one of the most overlooked yet critical gaps in healthcare: the lack of meaningful, accessible advance care planning. Under her leadership, Koda Health now supports over 1 million patients through partnerships with organizations like Cigna, Privia, and Houston Methodist.

Lawson Gow, Greentown Labs, 2025 Incubator/Accelerator of the Year

Lawson Gow currently serves as chief strategy officer for Greentown Labs, which was named Incubator/Accelerator of the Year in the 2025 Houston Innovation Awards. Prior to joining Greentown Labs as Head of Houston in 2025, Gow was as a managing partner at Helium Capital, an investment and advisory firm that aims to support founders across the entire lifecycle of entrepreneurship.

He is also the founder of The Cannon, an innovation-infrastructure provider that operates a growing network of innovation hubs for its community of startups, entrepreneurs, investors, and corporate innovators.

Sarah Hein, March Biosciences, 2025 Female-founded Business of the Year

Sarah Hein

Sarah Hein is the founding CEO of March Biosciences, a clinical-stage cell-therapy company targeting challenging malignancies. Prior to cofounding March Biosciences, she was the founding Entrepreneur in Residence for the Texas Medical Center Innovation Accelerator for Cancer Therapeutics (TMCi ACT).

Formerly, she was a cofounder and the vice president of operations at Courier Therapeutics, a cancer immunotherapy startup acquired by Valo Health. She was also director of research at Resonant Therapeutics, an antibody therapeutics platform technology company. She began at Mercury Fund as a Venture Fellow directly after graduating with her PhD in Molecular Biology from Baylor College of Medicine.

Tanu Jain, FlowCare, 2025 Startup of the Year

Tanu Jain

Tanu Jain is a product executive, entrepreneur, founder and CEO of FlowCare, and registered nurse with a track record of building products from zero to global scale. She previously led product at BioIQ before founding FlowCare, a Houston-based period care infrastructure platform making period care a standard in every restroom. In under 16 months, FlowCare has signed deployed across four enterprise customers and impacted more than 1.5 million women.

FlowCare was named Startup of the Year at the 2025 Houston Innovation Awards, and Jain has been recognized with additional honors including the SDG Super Changemaker – Pewter — at the Global Sustainability Awards 2026.

Prabhdeep "Prab" Sekhon, Eclipse Energy, 2025 Energy Transition Business of the Year

Prabhdeep Singh Sekhon

Prabhdeep Singh Sekhon is CEO of Eclipse Energy, an energy technology company transforming depleted oil fields into low-cost, sustainable hydrogen resources through subsurface biotechnology. He brings nearly two decades of global energy experience spanning climate technology, venture capital, private equity, and multi-billion-dollar energy projects across five continents.

Previously, he held leadership roles at NextEra Energy Resources and Hess Corporation. He is also a founder and managing director of GreenLite Resources and a founding member of Cotogna Sports Group. He holds an MBA from Wharton, a Masters in Engineering from Texas A&M, and a BS from the University of Calgary.

Wade Pinder, Product Houston, 2025 Trailblazer Award Winner

Wade Pinder thinks of himself as an "ecosystem wayseeker," helping founders and builders in and around Houston find their footing, understand the landscape, and move through uncertainty with more clarity. Through Product Houston, he works at the intersection of product strategy, founder support, ecosystem mapping, and community-building, with a particular focus on helping people show up in the right rooms before they feel fully ready.

His background includes years in product management at Blinds.com and Home Depot, along with founding and leading the Houston Product Community for six years. He was recognized by as Mentor of the Year in the 2023 Houston Innovation Awards and received the Trailblazer Award in 2025.

Laura Furr Mericas, Interim Editor, InnovationMap

Laura Furr Mericas is interim editor for InnovatonMap.com and EnergyCapitalHTX.com. She is a longtime contributor to both sites and has reported on Houston's innovation ecosystem for InnovationMap since 2020. Previously, she served as web editor and data reporter for Houston Business Journal.

Report: Income for top 1 percent earners in Texas has surged in 2026

money matters

In a state where local billionaires are wealthier than they've ever been, high-earning Texans need to make $73,000 more than they did a year ago if they want to be among the top 1 percent of earners, a new report has revealed.

SmartAsset's study analyzed income thresholds for the top 1, 5, and 10 percent of earners in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, using 2022 IRS data for individual tax return filers (the most recent year available), adjusted to 2026 dollars.

Texas has the 11th highest income threshold, with residents needing to make a minimum of $817,158 to be considered among the top 1 percent of earners statewide. In 2025, Texans needed to make about $744,000 to be among the top 1 percent.

For comparison, residents living in the nation's capital must make at least $1.16 million to qualify as top 1 percent earners. The District of Columbia led the nation with the highest income threshold to be a top earner.

To be considered among the top 5 percent of earners in Texas, a resident would need to make $312,671. The income threshold to be considered among the top 10 percent is $210,609.

SmartAsset additionally found that 128,130 Texas residents qualified as top 1 percent earners in 2022. Nationally, the report estimated that fewer than 2 million households earn enough to be considered among the top 1 percent of earners nationwide, but 23 million households rank among the top 10 percent.

"In some places, households can enter the top 1 percent at income levels that fall well below the threshold elsewhere, reflecting an uneven landscape of wages and wealth," the report said.

A separate SmartAsset study that tracked the upper and lower thresholds for middle class households found Houston residents need to make anywhere from $42,907 to $128,722 to maintain their middle class status.

The top 10 states with the highest thresholds to be considered in the top 1 percent of earners in the U.S. are:

  • No. 1 – District of Columbia ($1,156,664)
  • No. 2 – Connecticut ($1,147,898)
  • No. 3 – Massachusetts ($1,006,921)
  • No. 4 – California ($987,325)
  • No. 5– New Jersey ($969,976)
  • No. 6 – New York ($959,562)
  • No. 7 – Florida ($956,449)
  • No. 8 – Washington ($903,303)
  • No. 9 – Colorado ($828,772)
  • No. 10 – Wyoming ($819,014)
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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

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