What if we could finally solve the complex data equation?

Nowadays, thanks to the growth of digital transformation and investment, every business is now in the data business. Even before the pandemic hit, many organizations had already started realising the value of data and recognising their dependence on not just data, but good quality and accurate data, for business success. 

A CEO at an American bank once revealed to me that his 103-year-old bank still did everything on spreadsheets, even though it was trying to become the kind of highly profitable, digital-first bank that anticipates financial needs and empowers its clients with frictionless experiences. 

Many businesses recognised that they needed to become a data company when the pandemic hit; the need to transform digitally became not just important, but also urgent. However, even though companies want and need to become data-driven, they are not all that successful at doing it yet – something our recent survey revealed. 

Nearly 40 percent of the business leaders in the UK make the majority of their decisions without data. This result may not be surprising as the same survey reveals that the first challenge UK business leaders have with data is ensuring data quality (53 percent). So why is using data so challenging?

For decades, managing and using data for analysis was focused on the mechanics: collecting data, cleaning it, storing it and cataloguing it. However, the preoccupation with the mechanics of the data management process created some enormous challenges, including there being no connection between the people who prepare data and those who make the decisions or assess the state of the business and a piecemeal approach to managing data, which creates silos within companies. 

People and systems on the front lines need to be able to easily validate that the data fuelling day-to-day business is reliable and risk-free, so that companies can gain a deeper understanding of the data they have to assist them in driving better business outcomes. To get this reliable data, it is no longer enough to simply have solutions in place that are highly effective at moving and storing more corporate data. Focusing on getting, moving, and storing more data means that companies are drowning in data, which is why the data management market itself is estimated to be worth about $130 billion.

While capturing and storing data used to be a problem, it was never the end game. Companies would collect as much data as possible and figure out how to use it later, but then later never came. So, those very same companies had in essence created a digital landfill of corporate information, with no way to easily and securely sort through the volume to find the data they need to make data-driven decisions. 

Too many companies still haven’t addressed some of the most basic components of the data equation, like knowing what data they have, where it is, who is using it and, perhaps critically, they have zero ways to measure the data’s health.  

Visibility and clarity into data’s reliability, risk and opportunity to provide value to the business is key. Ironically enough, data is the most intangible business asset, so every organization should use data management solutions that provide the knowledge needed to make smarter, more agile decisions, while avoiding potential risks. 

To get a measurable and quantifiable view into their data, every business no what size it is, should check its data health.