The Data-Driven Organization: Building a Data Strategy
The data-driven organization puts data and analytics as a centerpiece of it's business strategy and operational priority. It competes effectively in the market by making data-driven decisions and optimizations as part of day to day operations.
Most companies today are striving to become data-driven. But what does that mean exactly? More than just installing the right tools and applications, becoming data-driven is about making data and analytics part of the business strategy, its systems, processes and culture. It’s about creating a mindset in which analytics form the basis of all fact-based business decisions, and are embraced by all levels of the organization.
Just like electricity, data has become a basic enterprise asset that is quickly revolutionizing the world, enabling better, faster, cheaper business processes. Data-driven organizations are committed to gathering data concerning all aspects of the business. By enabling employees at every level to use the right data at the right time, data can foster conclusive decision-making and becomes part of the companies’ competitive advantage.
How to unlock the value of data
Understanding the sources of organizational data and how to derive competitive advantage from these data sets is the key problem companies need to solve. Unlike traditional enterprises, data-driven organizations don’t grow linearly, but exponentially. Just look at the spectacular growth of companies like Amazon and Google, who have built their entire business models around the exploration and exploitation of information.
What these companies have in common is a data-centric approach that goes beyond operational excellence. This requires them to have a plan to identify key data about customers and generate and analyze data while customers use the product or services offered by the company. Ability to think about customer's 360 degrees interaction with all parts of the company and product and use this information to develop new insights is a key organizational perspective that is needed.
The challenges of becoming data-driven
Persistent silo thinking
While most companies agree that data should be at the heart of everything they do, the majority don’t have a solid, company-wide data strategy in place and continue to keep information siloed.
Privacy regulations The rise of data-driven organizations ultimately creates a more transparent world and increases trust between businesses and the market. The risks of invasion of privacy, market manipulation and monopolization, however, have dominated the news for quite some time. That’s why data-driven organizations need to have a profound knowledge of new rules, like GDPR, to avoid steep fines and sanctions or even lose their license to operate.
Lack of data integrity Most companies already have ample data to make insightful decisions, but most of that information is poorly managed and exploited. In other words, there is a clear need for better data management and governance.
Identifying the right technology
Due to the overabundance of data solutions, many companies today are struggling to find a good fit for their specific case. Identifying the best-fitting technologies and implementing them successfully remains one of the top challenges on the road to data-driven greatness.
Having the right skills According to a study by Gartner, companies struggle to meet the data skills requirements they need. More than just number-crunching, there is a fine art to data science. Finding the data-savy people who understand the company and have profound technological knowledge as well is not an easy feat.
The data-driven world
For most companies, data and analytics are mostly important to driving operational excellence and fostering better customer relations. Innovative organizations use new technologies and insights to go a step further and rethink their whole strategy, or even come up with new and creative business models. For example, governments can provide better services to citizens, hospitals can care for patients beyond clinic walls, and companies can build data-driven platforms that invite more clients and partners to co-create new products and services and unlock new sources of value.
How we can help you
If you’re looking to become a data-driven organization, AideExpert Advisory isn’t just the perfect partner to get the basics right and help you build a solid data and analytics environment. We will also inspire you to update your business model based on data, provide tracks for continuous optimization, help you put tools and best practices in place so you can continue to unleash the full potential of your own data.