‘Big Data’ has been among the most popular buzzwords lately and being data-driven is a huge necessity today for all organizations. Rightly so. Businesses have the opportunity to leverage the abundance of digital data and insights readily available, along with the power of business intelligence to grow, increase the bottom line, and succeed. Long story short, either you make sure your business is data-driven or be ready to be overtaken in the future by the companies that are. That time is not too far.
What does it take to be data-driven? In my opinion, it is no rocket science, but a basic discipline. The craft of Business intelligence is a fundamental discipline that we—consciously or unconsciously—are discrediting. BI has been labelled as outdated, inflexible, expensive, cumbersome, and quite unnecessary as we now have new, exciting, and agile technologies like machine learning, AI, big data, advanced analytics, and IoT that can make companies data-driven from here to the moon and back— and this technology is available at our fingertips!
How does your business become data-driven?
Here, I must be the one who destroys the good mood by telling a slightly longer version of the truth and what it takes to be data driven. Let me explain the truth behind what it really takes to be data-driven in detail.
Machine learning, AI, big data, advanced analytics, IoT, and similar technologies are fundamentally based on data—on something as simple as zeroes and ones. It is your ability to collect data, utilize the existing information, and compile all of it in a sensible and meaningful way, which enables your company to become data-driven.
The journey towards being data-driven is like building a rocket that goes to the moon—anyone can do it. You can build a rocket yourself too. Perhaps, if you are good or lucky enough, your rocket will be up and running in a single attempt.
However, just like building a rocket on your own from scratch, starting on your next data-driven journey alone could be an expensive and time-consuming process. An ideal road toward becoming data-driven starts with reliable business intelligence techniques and the ability to leverage and trade on data; regardless of how tech-savvy you want your data-driven plan to be.
Therefore, you would need a skilled partner, or a professional rocket builder, with the right expertise, for the company's journey and development towards being data-driven. This partner should have the expertise to extract knowledge and insights from data that you can trade on to create business value.
Essentially, this partner should have expertise and the methodology to build you a good, solid data-driven rocket that can be fired safely. You can also add features for the rocket, per your requirement. Your partner should also consider a number of key factors that help determine whether you achieved your expectation in your effort towards be data driven.
What characterizes the right partner?
In fact, finding the right partner with expertise, experience and proven methods is Step #1 on the journey to becoming data driven.
You need a professional partner who can:
- Choose the right, scalable, technical solution and architecture that you can easily build on
- Choose the right method for conceptual modulation and visualization
- Prioritize a solution with an intuitive and easy-to-understand dashboard, with a good visualization to ensure that you immediately understand how to respond to data
- Take care of the importance of user adoption - the organization must adopt the solution and feel that it is usable in everyday life
- Carefully select and assemble your BI organization - it must control that the journey is going in the right direction
- Ensure that your solution always runs with the correct load of numbers and an efficient and easy support setup
The ability to leverage and trade on data is the crux
To summarize my point: 100% of a company’s success with a data-driven approach depends on its ability to collect, utilize, and trade on data, which have been at the core of the business intelligence craft for years. These capabilities will also continue to be fundamental for all new technologies such as machine learning, AI, big data, advanced analytics, IoT, or something brand new that we are not aware of yet.
Essentially, if you get the right rocket built at the beginning of the journey, you will have the foundation to take advantage of the new technologies without having to start over or make expensive and time-consuming modifications.
Get in touch with me below, to take off on your data-driven future!