BUILDING A DATA-DRIVEN ORGANISATION

Across the world, organisations are building resources for the collection, storage, security and analysis of their data, and transforming themselves into data-driven entities. According to a survey, more than two-thirds of the respondents said that their company is making significant investment in data analytics for optimising the data of all stakeholders for meeting their business objectives. A study by McKinsey Global Institute says organisations which are data-driven are most likely to increase their customer acquisition by almost 23 times and also retain their customer 6 times, as compared to organisations who have not built a data optimisation culture. When companies deploy a solid data mining and scaling culture, they experience significant improvement in business operations, decision-making and customer engagement. Harnessing the power of data will also increase the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, boost your product development and innovation and give your organisation a competitive edge for achieving medium and long-term business goals. 

But how does an organisation transform itself into a data-driven entity? 

Some questions to consider

Before organisations decide to transform themselves into a data-driven company, they should consider some important questions pertaining to this transformation. This will give them insight whether or not they are prepared to deal differently with data.

“What are the existing problems at various levels which data transformation will help us solve?”

“What are the processes that need refinement for ensuring data optimisation and governance?” 

“What are the company leadership’s views on positioning data as the core focus of decision-making?”

“How ready are our employees in terms of skill sets for adapting to the new data thrust?”

How high is the trust factor among management and employees with respect to the existing data?”

“What are the external resources we would need to effectively deploy a robust data management strategy?”

Once you have the answers to all of the above, you should proceed towards drawing up the blueprint towards creating a sound data culture across all functions.

Let senior executives drive the transformation

Remember that it will take more than just technology for effectively transforming your organisation into a successful data-driven entity. This major shift requires the strategic adoption of new business processes, relevant skill sets and changing employee mindset. Your organisation’s senior executives will play a key role in orchestrating and facilitating this transformation. It is important that they have implicit belief in the fact that a compelling data-driven thrust will enable the organisation scale up to the next level of growth. The following steps will ensure successful transformation of the company into a game-changing data-driven organisation.

Prioritise the deployment of data across all business roles by treating it as capital

The technology used for this transformation should be scalable and, most importantly, easy to understand and use by employees across functions

Invest in a comprehensive learning and development exercise for skilling employees on how to deal with data and be result-oriented in their approach

Align effective use of data with employee promotion and performance evaluation

Empower all employees with relevant information on this transformation, as per their role and experience

When your organisation will make analytics and data its strategy focus area, it will begin its journey towards transforming itself into a robust data-driven entity, ready to embrace the next level of category growth.