What Is Intelligence Elevated? Unraveling the Concept
Data without action is worthless. It’s how you choose to interpret and act on it that creates worth. “BI itself has minimal value,” echoes CIO Martin Davis. “Doing something with it that impacts the business is where the value is. By the same argument, data cycle time has no value. Therefore, the value comes from better business decisions and reducing business cost.”
But how can data support smarter, faster business decision-making? Today, any platform that helps non-technical users discover data and make business decisions faster is valuable. Such a platform can effectively increase the collective IQ of what some have called the sentient enterprise. Many businesses today are working to achieve this state, where people with questions can quickly find the right answers.
I like to call this aim “Intelligence Elevated.” It speaks to the heart of what leaders, from CIOs to CFOs, find important. That being said, elevating intelligence in the business decision-making process takes considerable effort and commitment.
To deliver this vision, “you need to both empower people and help break down technology silos so employees can actually access the data,” points out CIO Deb Gildersleeve. This requires organizations to “foster a data-driven culture.” But how do you make this vision a reality?
Without question, Intelligence Elevated hints at higher levels of human understanding. Let’s explore the concept of Intelligence Elevated from the bottom up. After all, while intelligence is mined from data, insights are derived from the people working with that data.
Intelligence Elevated describes an ideal organizational state, where a culture of data-driven decision-making thrives. That means more people, at every level, have more access to trusted data and the training and tools to use it wisely. It also means embracing discomfort, according to author Randy Bean.
“People ask me what are the characteristics that I see of data-driven organizations,” shares Randy Bean, author of Fail Fast, Learn Faster: Lessons in Data-Driven Leadership in an Age of Big Data, Disruption, and AI. “I point to organizations like, for example, Capital One. In every conversation that I ever have with Capital One, they say, ‘What are others doing? What’s coming along? What should we be doing that we’re not?’
“In other words, their relentless drive to be data-driven means that they never rest. They’re never comfortable. They’re always looking for better ways. They’re always looking to see what others are doing because they know that unless they continue to do things to stay data-driven, that they won’t be the most data-driven going forward. And when I go into organizations and they sit back with our arms folded and they say, ‘Yeah, we have it all figured out,’ those are the organizations that I truly worry about.”
Today, effective leaders develop and promote a data culture, embracing new opportunities to learn and improve. But what technology do you need to support this? “As a user, a highly usable data portal or access tool — including data discovery and contextualization — is critical for more casual, non-power users,” CIO David Seidl suggests. “I think that’s the real destination of self-service BI in the long term, with a stop at power users along the way.
