2500 years ago, Greek philosopher Heraclitus made his famous statement that “the only constant in life is change.” Since then, the pace of change has accelerated dramatically, especially over the past two decades as technological innovation has shifted into high gear. Digital transformation technologies, built on a rapidly evolving cloud infrastructure, are transforming the way we live and work.
Agility will be a defining feature of successful companies in the 2020s and beyond. According to Gartner, 69 percent of boards of directors say that the effects of the pandemic crisis, the economic crisis, and the social crisis are accelerating digital business initiatives. Organizations that are able to develop sound competencies around agility and data integrity–especially those who leverage data as a strategic advantage–will be well-positioned to dominate the competitive landscape in the years ahead.
Forbes noted in September 2020: “The last six months alone have produced more digital transformation than the last decade, with every transformation effort already underway finding itself accelerated, and at scale.” To grow, or in some cases to even survive, businesses must continually transform to keep pace with shifts in the market, respond to competitive pressures, and react to macroeconomic trends. To do that, business leaders must focus on continuous improvement in data integrity. An Organization’s capacity to organize, manage, and extract insights from its data will mean the difference between success and failure.
In the year ahead, organizations across the globe should focus on five key strategies to build trust and confidence in their data and leverage that data to achieve greater business agility and efficiency.
A required core competency for successful businesses will be their capacity to establish confidence among all stakeholders that data is well-governed, that private and confidential information is adequately safeguarded, and that all regulatory, legal, and ethical mandates are being adhered to properly. The pillars of data integrity–data integration, data quality, data governance, location intelligence, and data enrichment–are fundamental prerequisites to achieving those objectives.
Data integrity can be especially challenging in today’s global economy, as mergers and acquisitions are an increasingly frequent path to growth and market consolidation. Even in cases where an acquired company already has effective measures in place to ensure data integrity, disparate systems must be brought together and harmonized. That inevitably leads to new integration and migration requirements, de-duplication and other data quality measures, alignment of security and privacy standards, and much more.
Today’s consumers have increasingly high expectations about the quality of their interactions with the companies from whom they purchase products and services. Digital marketing has led to highly personalized contacts with customers and prospects, but an effective data-driven approach takes personalization even further by tailoring each contact to the specific needs and preferences of the target audience. A data-driven customer experience is one that can anticipate exactly what the customer wants, then present them with the content and offers that will be most meaningful to them.
