Data Strategy and why you need one.

Data can't be an afterthought. An organisation might be tempted to follow the new sparkly technology, but, and this is a BIG BUT, The organisation MUST consider its strategic data needs first, ongoing data management, and its culture around data to avoid wasting time and money. Your project will fail if you don’t have your house in order before you buy the shiny product. Do not build the conservatory before you lay some foundations.

Your data is a company asset. Under a defined strategy it can add profit ( not just monetary) value, help you re focus and enhance how you operate at every level. A data strategy should align to your business plan and priorities and inform your technology strategy.

 To be worthwhile a data strategy has to work with a business objective. more often than not once we have a client on board we see a rift form between the business side and IT, both sides need to have stakeholders onboard and working towards to the same goal to define and measure the successes.

If you’re a small set up or a new company you might be thinking “this isn’t my priority, we need to grow 1st”. this will help you grow, rather than making reactive decisions on cloud storage, analytics, data access, marketing, sales focus. A defined strategy will do this for you, be proactive, you have made the step in setting up your own firm why wouldn’t you want to give yourself the best chance of succeeding ? data isn’t just something you have, data is your company, how you utilise it is up to you.

My colleague Jon Smith has gone into more detail here where he discusses the good bad and the ugly of data and data strategy:

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/rise-fall-datas-reputation-during-covid19-part-1-ugly-jon-smith