Creating A Data-Driven Business Culture
As the COVID-19 pandemic has forced many businesses to operate remotely and consider a hybrid work model going forward, the need to adopt technology to support collaboration and communication is key. A data-driven culture embraces the use of data in decision making. It treats data as a strategic asset of the company by making data widely available and accessible. It focuses on capturing, cleaning, and curating meaningful data from across the business. It promotes frequent experimentation to learn and improve.
Digital transformation is the process of using digital technology in all parts of a business and significantly altering how you function and deliver value to your clients and it requires a significant strategic revolution and change to your organisation’s culture and processes.
Businesses use technologies to extract the possibilities, efficiency gains, and customer engagement for better business opportunities. But many small and big companies fail to understand the necessary change and existing practices that are outdated. The last year has certainly proved that it pays to have reliable yet flexible technology baked into the core of your business model.
While businesses have access to more data than ever before, they are under close scrutiny to ensure that the data is being kept confidential and in accordance with laws such as GDPR.
Given the rapidly changing technology and business landscape, CIOs also must determine how they can optimally structure their team to deliver on business objectives. A balanced approach involves bringing in fresh talent from the outside and continually building up the knowledge base of the internal team. Historically, traditional IT environments were designed based on legacy technologies and solution delivery methodologies that resulted in less agile and more episodic value delivery to the business. With the explosion in cloud-based technologies, mobility platforms and advancements in areas such as analytics and artificial intelligence, today’s IT team requires an entirely new set of skills to deliver value at the pace required to maintain their firm’s competitiveness. A mix of fresh technology and digital design skills are needed to reshape the business. In addition to developing the special skill sets for cloud, artificial intelligence, and data science, CIOs also need digital strategists who can think creatively about crafting new business models and are able to work with functional leaders to plot organisational processes for digital work tasks that flow smoothly.
The digital revolution is reshaping how business is being conducted. Companies are exploring new ways to use mobile, social, and other digital channels to connect with customers in the channels they prefer and to drive efficiencies in business and operational processes.
A major challenge companies face in executing on digital strategies is determining which C-level executive is best positioned to drive the digital agenda. Research reflects that ownership is fractured across multiple C-level roles. According to a study conducted by Altimeter Group, 34% of digital transformation efforts are owned by the CMO, followed by the CEO (27%), CIO (19%) and the CDO (15%).
There are multiple benefits for enabling a data-driven culture. Executives and knowledge workers can make faster, more accurate decisions using current or real-time data. Organisational leaders can use analytics tools to drill down into data to uncover customer and business trends as they’re occurring, allowing executives to make strategic decisions ahead of competitors.
Shifting to data-led decision-making can have a powerful business impact. Data-driven organisations are 23 times more likely to acquire customers, 6 times as likely to retain those customers, and 19 times as likely to be profitable, according to the McKinsey Global Institute. A data-driven culture is not just about using data to make big decisions. A data-driven culture enables and empowers a lot of small, daily decisions by frontline employees using the data.
In the digital economy, speed matters and using data to quickly test product ideas, design decisions, and hypotheses can increase business agility. As advanced data management and analytics capabilities continue to emerge, this is creating new opportunities for CIOs to make it easier for company executives to explore and obtain value from data in new ways.
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