Data is Just the First Step

“It’s a capital mistake to theorize before one has data”: Sherlock Holmes
We all think we’re using data to make rational decisions. The reality is most of us are simply using data to rationalize the decisions we make.
Value creation today is generated by the quality and relevance of the ongoing data your business produces. Data really has become the new oil. When used properly, it is a powerful energy source that can propel your business. Like oil, though, data can be very tricky to refine and turn into energy. The mainstreaming of Big Data technology has enabled companies to capture massive amounts of information, far, far beyond what we ever imagined.

In 2019, internet users spent the equivalent of 1.2 billion years online (source Digital 2019)

It would take a person 181 million years to download all the data from the internet (source Physics.org )

90% of all data has been created in the last two years (source IBM)
By 2020, every person will generate 1.7 megabytes of data in just a second (source DOMO)

The sheer volume of data being captured today is mind-blowing. Despite this massive growth in data-collection, the gap between acquiring data and using it to run your business is growing.

99.5% of collected data never gets used or analysed (source Gartner)
Less than 50% of the structured data collected from IoT is used in decision making (source McKinsey)

The harsh truth is that data collection technology is far outpacing most organizations ability to analyze and act on the data collected. There is another harsh truth to be confronted here too. Many business leaders struggle to admit how little data and analysis they use in their day to day operations. At the end of the day, your business is either growing new customers, growing existing customers or improving effeciency. As a simple experiment, the next time data is sourced in a meeting at your company, challenge yourself to draw a direct link to one or more of these core business objectives. If you can’t, stop and ask your team why.
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast”: Peter Drucker

Gartner research shows that the typical organization has undertaken five major companywide changes in the last 3 years-and neazrly 75% expect to multiply the types of major change initiatives they will undertake in the next 3 years. Yet half of these change initiatives fail and only 34% are considered successful. You can’t change what you can’t measure and you can’t measure what you don’t track. The key to successful business transformation begins with becoming a data-driven culture. As the data suggests, this is really challenging to do however. Here are 6 tips, all based on personal experience as a turn-around and growth expert, on how to change your company into a data-driven business.

What is this “Data” You Speak of ? Seems like a painfully obvious point but the best place to start is with an honest assessment of what data you currently have. In the Business Information Industry that we work in many companies talk about their “data strategy” when what they’re actually talking about are databases. An email list is not Data. It is the equivalent of a holiday card list and it degrades quickly. As Gregg Thaler noted “Contact data ages like fish not wine…it gets worse as it gets older, not better”. It is possible that an email newsletter can generate a ton of realtime valuable data that you can act on. The database in and of itself isn’t realtime data however and has limited value. As a guide think relevancy and recency. The closer to the customer and the closer to real time, the more valuable your data will be. Provenance matters too. 1st party data is optimal. 2nd party data might provide additional value. 3rd party data should be avoided.

Think from Interest to Invoice. As you start outlining your data architecture, design it to match your customer experience.