Is It Enough to Just Have Data? What Else You Need to Data-Drive Your Business

Data-driven everything

Whether we like it or not, data is a fundamental part of our modern lives. We capture it, work with it, use it daily, and we even create it ourselves. A society focused on high performance and sustainable growth needs to compare the current state with the past and constantly plan for the future. In any case, data not only enriches our lives and supports the company performance, but it even creates new business models and industries.

“Data-driven” is a commonly used term referring to the utilization of data to inform, innovate processes, enhance the quality of products and customer service, and to increase revenue. When systematically used and tracked, data-driven intelligence improves the decision-making process and provides a competitive advantage in almost any business function i.e., marketing, sales, customer service, finance, human resources, and operations. Yet, when all this functionality is known, how do you build a framework to make it all work in your business?

A simple concept for a data management business model

Similar, to any framework, we need to understand the objectives first – whether, what and how to utilize data for our business. Today, data management makes sense not only for large corporations but also for medium-sized companies and startups, but the latter especially need to create data governance within the organization, at least with a simple high-level concept and interconnect it with the strategy.

Once we have an understanding that we need to utilize the data, we need to have the know-how – how to collect, store, structure, analyze, and explain the data. Capturing insights is critical to expanding the business but it can also be particularly challenging unless you already have prior experience. If you do not have this experience hiring external consultants to help you is a great starting point.

Then, we need to have proper tools to effectively manage the data – and that could mean vast datasets collected from multiple channels, stored in various files, databases, and systems. And sure, Excel is great, but not enough. In addition to the data warehouse, we should have a platform that will harmonize data, ensure its quality, and integrate across multiple, varied systems.

Finally, the most important part of the framework, we need to have the right people. People who understand the needs and have the know-how mentioned above, who can work with the tools, and constantly develop data management as a discipline, as their “craft”.

In the coming months we will be expanding our new resources section with all sorts of posts and articles covering all areas of this framework but focusing on "the people". Why not bookmark it?

Who will do it?

Like every person, every company is unique with its needs, customers, processes, systems, budget, corporate culture, etc., so it would not be appropriate to provide “must-do” tips on how to get started and what we should definitely do. We may only say that there are multiple scenarios - for some companies hiring a few experts will be sufficient and the team will grow over time if needed, for others it will be worth to invest in building the senior team from the beginning. Others might just need expert consultants to get them on the right path. However, you may want to put your team together we can help.

Companies either have a clear idea of what they want or what they don't have and so it makes sense to do an initial analysis before starting the search. For example, we experienced a situation where a client approached us with a very specific assignment and definitive requirements. After engaging with the experts in our partner company Simplity, who participate in the selection process as professional guarantors, we proposed another solution and suggested what the team could look like, how it could be set up, and what competencies within the organization should it have.

In this case, not only were we able to find and place the right experts who fitted into the organization quickly and successfully, but we also saved the client a significant amount of time in the hiring process, and also costs, all of which would otherwise have been spent inefficiently. Should you be interested in such a consultation and free assessment, get in touch!