Why Is Data Literacy Important For Any Business?
The more data literate your organisation is, the better your results will be. In my work with companies all over the world, I see it every day that organisations that fail to boost data literacy of their employees will be left behind because they are not be able to fully use the vital business resource of data to their business advantage. In this post, I explore what data literacy is, why it’s crucial for every business and ways to promote data literacy.
The first step in data literacy is the ability to communicate, write and read about data in context. Then, employees, not just data scientists, need to critically assess the data, find meaning in the numbers and glean actionable business insights from it. Employees with expertise over a business area are going to be the ones that are best able to act on data insights to create results. This is why it is critical for everyone in your organisation, not just data analysts, to have access to data and a basic ability to read and use data. Not only can your organisation make decisions based on facts when it’s data literate, but users are able to experiment with the data to uncover new insights and opportunities. Putting data to use, not just collecting it, is the key to the future of your business.
Why does data literacy matter for every business?
Even though spending on big data and analytics products is supposed to surpass $200 million by 2020 according to the International Data Corporation (IDC), 50% of organisations will still lack the data literacy and AI skills to achieve business value. It doesn’t matter how much data your organisation collects; it isn’t beneficial until it gets put to work for your organisation. Data must be analysed to get actionable insights before it provides business value.
According to a Gartner Annual Chief Data Officer (CDO) Survey, poor data literacy is one of the main roadblocks to the CDO’s success and a company’s ability to grow. To combat this, 80% of organisations will have specific initiatives to overcome their employees’ data deficiencies by 2020 Gartner predicts.
Data literacy is to the 21st century what literacy was in the past century. It will propel forward momentum and success. It’s essential for everyone in an organisation to understand why it’s important to improve data literacy. Employees should be able to use data to influence their day-to-day activities as well as big-picture decisions. If used the right way, it can help every employee achieve their objectives, perform their job better and contribute to overall company performance. And, when you give everyone access to the data, it can make your operations more streamlined and efficient since those who know their business won’t have to wait for data scientists to interpret the data for them. The bottleneck is removed.
