Over the course of last year, data has taken the front seat in driving a corporate’s car. Businesses now rely on data more than ever and are aiming to become data-driven organizations. But what does it really take to become a truly data-driven organization?ETCIO spoke with data and technology experts on how you can make your company a truly data-driven company.
“Less than 70% of data being generated today is being used for automation/ decision making. The majority of the remaining 30% data is being used for descriptive/ diagnostic analytics. For organizations to really call themselves data-driven in today’s world, there are two considerations – 1) How do they move from being descriptive/ diagnostic analysis driven to using predictive/ prescriptive power of data, and 2) How do they progressively move towards using a higher percentage of their generated data for defining their actions,” explained Nishant Nishchal, Partner, Kearney.
Utilizing data consistently for decision-making can be a growth driver for organizations. Driving change across all levels in the organization, innovating new products and services, ensuring customer and employee delight, all with data, is an effective way to be seen as a data-driven organization.
“To become a true-blue data-driven organization, one must first understand what it means to be data-driven. Once that is determined, we need to make a shift in the underlying technologies that define what we do as an organization. This means a shift from mere digitization to adopting cloud-based modern technologies such as data warehousing, analytics, etc. The next step should be to ascertain what are the data-led challenges that the organization faces and how do we organize them and empower the employees and help them serve customers better,” said Shoaib Mohammad – Founder & CEO, Lumiq.
The key is to not only leverage new technological opportunities to accelerate business, but to work towards making digital the heart of the business. An inseparable aspect of moving towards becoming data-driven is the upgradation of the cross-function tech systems to support the advancement in data and analytics.
Asfar Khan, Director – IT, Kellogg South Asia believes that it is imperative for the people and processes within an organization to be pragmatically ready to bring about these changes. To supplement this, from the top-down there should be a willingness to upskill and adapt to the system changes. Mindfully designed advanced learning modules and training programs help to mitigate skill gaps and raise awareness about the benefits of working with advanced data and analytics tools.
“Irrespective of the situation, the fundamentals should remain constant. The entire process should be timeline-based with dedicated investments made towards dealing with unforeseen circumstances, like the pandemic,” said Khan.
Read more: Here’s how Kellogg is becoming a data-driven business
Nishant Nishchal, Partner, Kearney helps us jot down the 5 mantras which can drive organizations towards being data-driven:
1) Prioritize the right problems and define the problems right,
2) Bring together the optimal team – a four in a box team consisting of business, technical, data science and systems integration expertise – to solve the right problems using data,
3) Build as you go – do focused debottlenecking of data and analytics infra to solve the prioritized problems rather than building a complete ecosystem right upfront,
4) Be agile in showing results, run short sprints leading to outcomes and
5) Manage change – move towards being a data backed organization is as much a transformation as any other.
