Know Your Data Know Your Customer

Are you Data Enlighted?

Are you aware of all your datasets in your organization? How are they generated, stored, retrieved and processed? If you want to monetize them, what cost of funds will be needed? An organization has to understand its existing datasets by implementing a data enlightenment program if it wants to use data effectively and become a data driven organization. Data enlightenment program aims to raise data awareness to your stakeholders which eventually will complement efforts towards understanding of your customers. Knowing your customer better provides several benefits to your business. Effective price discount, cost effective marketing campaigns and improved customer experience are the positive outcomes that your business can experience if it implements a well designed data enlightenment program. Businesses which have a high maturity in data enlightenment , they can go further and start investing in data monetization. It is at this point when business decision makers start to think about how they can use their existing business data to increase revenue, reduce cost and dive into new business models. All these are very possible if the business has invested in data analytics in terms of people, process and technology. Data enlightenment and monetization are providing a room for your business to offer better products and services to your existing and new customers.

Ways to raise Data Awareness

It is clear that data enlightenment plays a key role in understanding customer behavior. Your business needs to put more efforts to raise data awareness if you want to realize investments from data analytics. Improving data processes and expensive technology alone will not help without reasonable investment in people. Your business can raise data awareness by including a data awareness program as the important milestone in your data strategy. Continuous data training and on the job training to your staff can form as part of your data awareness program. By doing so, the data awareness agenda will navigate in parallel with other data agendas in the data strategy. This will raise the level of data literacy in your organization which will eventually transform data culture in your organization in a very positive way. The more your people understand the impact of data in running modern business the more they will understand your customers and offer great customer experience. Businesses which understand? and care about their customers are encouraging their customers to stay longer and spend more. For example, businesses which are operating in industries such as consumer and financial can leverage on data analytics and data awareness programs to increase their profitability.

Understand Customer Behavior with Data Analytics

Customers are the lifeblood of? a business, the more you understand them is better. Use data to understand your customer in 360 view, what channels are they using to transact the most? What is their frequency of transacting? What is their transaction volume? All these questions can be answered if you use your existing dataset wisely. Understanding your customers well gives your business a competitive advantage to offer better products and services which meet customer expectations. Data analytics can offer your business with capabilities to analyze historical and future data trends with respect to your customer. These capabilities help your sales and marketing team to focus on key customer segments and increase sales and customer retention. Data models and data visualizations are examples of data analytics capabilities that businesses can leverage to understand customer behavior. Some of the things that your business can improve after analyzing your customer behavior include, but not limited to product/service pricing, discounts management, customer service management, marketing campaigns and business expansion. With the increase in awareness of what data analytics can offer to business prosperity, it will be nearly impossible for a business to ignore data analytics if it wants to remain competitive and profitable. It is in this journey that business will know its data and hence know its customers well.

About Emmanuel Damas

Emmanuel has eleven (11) years of experience in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) domain. His technology experience cuts across several sectors including financial, education, manufacturing, telecommunications, health and transport. He has been involved in strategic and governance activities in relation to Information and Communication Technology (ICT) such as ICT policies and procedures design, Data analytics projects, Data migration projects, ICT system projects implementation, ICT Audits and Awareness trainings especially on data analytics and cyber security domains. Emmanuel's mission is to continue helping people and institutions in reaching their vision through adoption of effective ICT governance practices.