Imagine: Intellectual Data

One of the key success factors for businesses of today is the ability for people to make data-driven decisions within an environment of emerging, fast-paced transformation - this article digs a little deeper into how sensing your market and making sense of your data are crucial in remaining a competitive and viable business, enabling you to continuously change faster than the competition.

It’s unlikely that you’ll find intellectual (people) or data capital as explicit assets on your company's balance sheet in the same way as you would find physical capital (buildings, stock etc), however for the majority of organisations of tomorrow, both intellectual and data capital will grow in importance, in most cases overtaking the value of physical capital. Imagine then, the potential when both people and data come together as a joint force! - in the words of Yoko Ono and quoted on numerous occasions by John Lennon; "A dream you dream alone is only a dream, a dream you dream together is reality". Intellectual Data (the joint force) could be that reality.

This ability to bring people and data together - where data informs human decisions, whilst humans determine the most relevant data that adds the most value to the business - will differentiate the innovative, creative and socially adaptable models of tomorrow from the often-static business models of today.

Organisations need the right people, involved at the right time, in the right way to be able to make sense of what their data tells them about today ... and tomorrow. It’s one thing being sat on a potential gold mine of data, but how do you pan the nuggets from the residue? ... and how do you then translate this into a single view of both your organisation and your customers data? - the latter being imperative in understanding future purchasing trends and product needs.

Undoubtedly, technology plays a major role in making sense of your data, and there are some great MDM, PIM and data analysis tools our there, but in my experience, the intellectual skills associated with people adopting and utilising these tools effectively, is often the hardest to embed and maintain within the organisation. I don't believe it's all about adoption and utilisation of technology either. The ability for people to sense internal and external environments for trends, threats, opportunities for improvement, innovative ideas etc., whilst understanding the value of data and how it informs the decisions you make - all working within a socially developed network, are some of the skills and behaviours required for the future of work – Data Scientists perhaps?

The role of the Data Scientist is seen as an exclusive and in-demand skill, but the truth is that we all need to be Data Scientists to some extent, working in small, agile groups across the business in order to understand, model and govern our data of today (detective analysis) to inform us of the customer, supplier and market demands of tomorrow (predictive analysis).

To summarise, intellectual data will become more prominent in every job role in every organisation, where machine learning and AI will reduce the need for lots of tedious data analysis roles, I believe that the data scientists of tomorrow will need less analytical skills and more predictive and sensory skills alongside strategic awareness of their internal and external environment, where organisations are able to use their data to drive well-informed rapid and continuous change

Thanks for reading and I encourage you to share your thoughts with me through the relevant channels. In the meantime, I'm looking forward to what 2019 may bring in terms of helping clients prepare for adoption and utilisation of their data solutions by bringing people and data together to drive increased business value and improved customer experience.

Ian