How to Operationalize Data to Deliver Business Results
Andi Mann returns with findings from new research on how ‘data innovator’ companies are operationalizing data to speed innovation and produce revenue growth.
In an age of data-driven decisions, your board, peers, and staffs expect you to be the data expert for your business. But with the hype around big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, it is hard for technology leaders – CIO, CTO, CDO – to separate fact from fiction, or expectation from reality.
For this reason, my company, Splunk, recently commissioned an independent research firm, Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), to conduct a global survey of 1,300 business and IT leaders, seeking objective insights that will help IT leaders better understand and act on today’s data reality.
ESG’s research identified some key business outcomes that define the top 10 percent of the most mature “data innovators” (as opposed to the least mature cohort, which they call “data deliberators”). Then, they asked what these businesses are doing right to uncover and operationalize data.
The findings have strategic implications for all executives, and especially technology leaders. For example:
Sure, data innovators “do more with less”; but the real headline is that they also “grow the top-line”. Respondents reported better data use contributed on average 5 percent higher revenue and 5 percent lower costs – a 10 percent net profitability benefit and a total economic value of over $38 million. How better to prove that IT is a strategic revenue-generating asset, not just a tactical cost center – and why you deserve your seat at the table?
In part, the finding that data maturity improved the speed and quality of decision-making for 72 percent of data innovators explains this revenue impact. Mature data use helps to quickly moderate opinions, settle arguments, reduce bias, and highlight truths, making data innovators over three times more likely to make better, faster decisions than their competitors, when compared to data deliberators.
Most new initiatives in modern businesses depend on technology, and increasingly on data. With data enabling better and faster decisions, 76 percent of data innovators say they can innovate more often and bring new products to market faster by leveraging data, compared to just 55 percent of data deliberators. Again, this helps to explain at least in part the profitability boost reported by data innovators.
