Issue 23 | March 2024

Do you want to grow your business, innovate, drive efficiencies, &/or create new revenue streams? Of course, you do! Well data is the starting point…and this is the only data-focused roundup you’ll ever need!

?In this issue, it’s all about how our experiences as consumers, when it comes to data and AI, are driving greater expectations as business leaders.

As consumers we’re getting more and more, and easier and easier, access to data and AI…

We can access huge amounts of information on our mobiles…from our photos from 2003, to our sometimes cool and sometimes cheesy playlists, to our step count, to news, to social media, to the weather forecast for wherever you are, to maps of your destination, to your emails, to your work emails, to google for those random questions you thought you’d never ask, to the world wide web. We’re used to getting access to any information, and answers to all of our questions, in seconds. We can chat, text, surf, research, play, listen, read and more, all on our phones. So, as consumers, we’re getting used to having information available to us anytime, anywhere.

This has fast-tracked massively in 2023. Now AI has been around for decades…

…but I feel it’s taken until 2023 to truly go mainstream. Most of us will, by now, have played with ChatGPT at https://chat.openai.com/auth/login and received all sorts of answers to all sorts of questions on demand. We can now ask for help on anything – work, play, coding, history, random facts & more. And all of this is fast evolving - check out Microsoft’s awesome copilot Superbowl advert which makes harnessing the power of AI for work and play look easier than ever before - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaCVSUbYpVc.

As a consumer, it’s becoming easier and quicker and simpler to have access to any information we need, in any way we like, at any time. It’s our new norm. We expect instant access to information and instant answers to questions.

Yet, in the business world, we’re not keeping up…

?In the business world, we often feel that information is hard to access. We might need to ask someone to access the information for us via some convoluted, opaque and hidden approach that you never get to see…and if you do get to see, it can feel like looking behind the green curtain. The someone that you ask might come back to you today with the answers, or next week, or never…who knows?

It is often hard to find answers to even super simple business questions like:

-??????? Which customers are the most/least profitable?

-??????? What products or services or countries are performing the best/least?

-??????? How many customers do we even have?!

Most organisations are not maximising the value of their data, let alone AI. Most organisations are too busy doing their day jobs, and delivering their core products and services, in what has been a tough economic climate for years.

There are still loads of spreadsheets propping up organisations. Let’s face it, there are many organisations still using paper. The Microsofts and Googles and OpenAIs of this world are in the minority. Most organisations don’t trust their data…and many organisations don’t have a dashboard, let alone have any AI in place.

I imagine a business world where business leaders can check on their business performance like they’d check on the weather

Business leaders are consumers too. So, our expectations for easy access to business information will rapidly increase in line with our consumer experiences. As business leaders, why shouldn’t we be able to check on our business performance by checking an app on our mobile and seeing some simple symbols showing good vs bad performance?

2024 feels like it will be the start of a big step change in the demand for data and AI in businesses and organisations. Some of our clients have Board-level objectives that state a need to have at least trialled an AI solution in 2024. This is new.

How will this evolve in 2024 and beyond? I predict we’ll have business dashboards which display the key facts…with a Q&A ChatGPT-style interface on the side where we can ask those unexpected, one-off questions too. Something like these DATA3 demos…

The challenge for organisations is getting themselves AI-ready, ensuring that their information is secure & private, and starting their data transformation…so, we all have a lot of work to do.

What do you think? Drop me a line and let me know your predictions.

If you're interested in learning more, why not come along to our next webinar 'Free AI webinar for C-suite leaders in SMEs'. We'll be diving into our GenAI Data Interrogator tool, giving you a sneak peak at the possibilities. Get your ticket here.

And don't worry if you missed our last webinar, you can watch the full video here.

Thank you for reading…I’ll be back soon with more data news.

Remember…if you’re in data hell, I’m data Hels!

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This is me and the DATA3 Aotearoa founders in December…sorry to rub it in, but it was summertime drink time.