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With the importance of data becoming increasingly known for sustainable market success, many businesses are making data governance a key focus in 2021.
However, despite this, some organisations are still struggling to leverage the full potential of their data assets. According to research by Finextra in 2019, 95% of companies report negative impacts from poor data quality, which affects customer experience, business efficiency, and organisational reputation.
As well as this, incorrect ownership (69%), lack of trust in data (49%) and information overload (65%) are other key factors preventing businesses from incorporating a robust and reliable data strategy.
With these numbers in mind, it’s no wonder that even with the best intentions, data transparency and data intelligence is holding a number of businesses back from achieving their goals.
For many companies, collecting the data isn’t the problem. Most businesses likely already have more than enough data at their fingertips, but instead of opening the door to valuable insights and opportunities, it’s actually slowing down processes and hindering their success.
Let’s take a look at five common ways your data could be holding you back.
Unless your company has implemented reliable custom business intelligence software, it’s likely that your data will be stored in several places. Unfortunately, this is a huge hurdle that could be hurting your data practices.
When data is fragmented across Excel spreadsheets, your CRM, an ERP system, your accountancy software, and various other platforms, then employees don’t have the visibility they need to make informed decisions and drive innovation. No matter how accurate or smart your data is, they lack the whole picture.
This can lead to increased time spent searching for data that’s missing, or even trying to make decisions based on little or poor data, which may not always be in your business’ best interests.
Meanwhile, business intelligence software enables you to connect and integrate fragmented business data into one easy-to-reach place and transform it into beautiful, simple dashboards.
Once you have the data, you need a way to understand it. This is typically done by creating visual reports such as graphs, tree maps and pie charts, which should be easy to read and effortless to produce.
Unfortunately, creating these reports is often an arduous task and takes up valuable time and resources, such as hard-to-schedule graphic designers or costly third party tools. All this can make this part of the data sharing process less than enjoyable, and it could be precious time better spent elsewhere.
A powerful business intelligence software will help you to create beautiful visualisations in minutes, enabling you not just to understand your data, but also to display it proudly to clients, stakeholders and team-mates.
Having so much data that you don’t know what to do with it is an all-too-common scenario for most businesses, leaving them in a state of ‘analysis paralysis’. This stands in the way of smart, informed business decisions and could be wasting a huge amount of resources on collecting, storing, cleaning and processing data that may not actually be useful for your business objectives.
Only by collecting the data you really need, as well as knowing how to analyse it with purpose and clarity, can businesses truly benefit from the power data brings.
According to Finextra’s research, one in three (33%) organisations find trust a major challenge when extracting value from data. On average, companies believe 29% of their customer and prospect data is inaccurate in some way – a huge number, considering this is how many crucial business decisions are made. A further one in three report data being difficult to leverage because it is incomplete (38%) or not accessible through a single customer view (36%).
The reasons behind data inaccuracies can be various, but human error is the most common. 50% of organisations believe it’s down to data being inputted incorrectly, as well as a lack of automated checks in place when data is inputted for the first time (by customers, not just employees).
Other reasons include information being spread out across multiple sources as mentioned earlier (39%), and not having a clear data governance strategy in place (30%). This lack of quality means organisations do not have full confidence to make decisions based on their data, meaning they could be missing out on important business opportunities.
Part of implementing a transformative data strategy involves making data accessible to all those who need it. This is something most companies lack, however, as outdated practices and systems limit data ownership to a small select few.
This lack of control over information impedes the ability of 70% of businesses to meet strategic objectives (Finextra, 2019). For 84% of these, information is typically processed by IT, who aren’t always able to juggle this responsibility with their numerous other priorities. This means that other teams may struggle to get hold of data they need to carry out certain tasks, and also won’t have full visibility of the organisation’s data management needs.
Expanding data ownership not only helps employees do their job more effortlessly, but it also helps to build a data-driven culture. This can be done easily by implementing a well-structured data governance strategy and adopting a delegated approach, whereby the right data is easily accessible to those who need it, and those who use information are responsible for its upkeep.
Do you feel your business could benefit from having more control over your data? Bespoke helps to make data simple through a range of business intelligence and data analytics solutions.
Get in touch to arrange a free consultation and find out more.
In a world of ‘big data’ and information, more and more businesses are striving towards digital transformation as a way to keep up with the ever-changing technological landscape.
So what exactly is digital transformation and why should you be making it a focus for 2021? Here, we’ve outlined everything you need to know about this increasing business trend.
Digital transformation has taken on many meanings in today’s digital era of big data and data management. The truth is, it’s a term that can mean multiple things to different businesses, depending on a company’s main priorities and overarching end goal.
Broadly speaking, digital transformation is the practice of integrating digital technology into all areas of a business, significantly changing how it operates and provides value to customers. In doing this, digital transformation also requires businesses to rethink old models, become more agile in responding to new problems, get comfortable with failure and continually challenge the status quo.
According to Jay Ferro, CIO of Quikrete, digital transformation should begin with “a problem statement, clear opportunity, or an aspirational goal” – basically, your company’s ‘why’. This could revolve around improving customer experience or increasing productivity, or something more aspirational, like becoming the absolute best in your industry using new digital technologies you didn’t have years ago.
There are several reasons a business may decide to take on a project of digital transformation. But for many, the most basic and common reason is survival – they simply have to.
An organisation’s ability to adapt quickly to potential manufacturing disruptions, market pressures and changing customer demands is critical to its long-term success. This has become even more apparent in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic, when consumer habits shifted dramatically and businesses were faced with totally new and unprecedented challenges.
Recent studies show that increasingly the digital transformation process is being viewed as a long-term investment, with relevant initiatives set to take over a 50% share of worldwide technology investment by 2023. Technology is no longer just a choice – it’s a fundamental business strategy that must be part of wider operative-initiatives.
Five common ways that digital transformation can help your business are:
As just mentioned, data and analytics can play a key role in an organisation’s digital transformation efforts. Stats show that fewer than 50% of documented corporate strategies mention data and analytics as essential components for delivering enterprise value, according to Gartner, but this is changing. By 2022, it is predicted that 90% of corporate strategies will mention big data and analytics as a critical enterprise asset.
The answer, therefore, is clear: data and analytics competency should be paramount within your business for digital transformation success. This means defining a strong data strategy and implementing the relevant data transformation methods in order to make the absolute most of the information available.
Leading organisations in various industries are wielding data and analytics as competitive weapons, using them to accelerate growth and inspire innovation. But many companies still struggle under the weight of their traditional business models and processes that may not allow for the potential that data and analytics can bring. Others may also not be able to make the cultural shift needed to work with big data, or commit to the information management and analytics skills needed to truly make the most of its power.
Here at Bespoke, we provide various solutions to help you transform your data strategy. From direct consultancy to our range of out-of-the-box automation and analysis tools, we can guide you every step of the way towards making the most of big data. Simply get in touch to arrange a free initial consultation with one of our experts.
It wouldn’t be entirely surprising for companies to ask: is there an end to digital transformation? How can we know when we have reached it? When will we be able to say we have truly achieved digital transformation?
A more relevant question might be, what comes after digital transformation? Is there a next phase, and what will we call it?
Gartner has named the period beyond digital transformation as the ‘ContinuousNext’, which will reflect the capabilities all companies need to keep up with the continuous change driven by technology.
ContinuousNext is a formula for success in a world that is constantly changing…”through and beyond digital transformation”. Meanwhile, Accenture is naming this period as the “post-digital era”.
Overall however, industry experts agree that digital transformation is a continuous process, as technology will always continue to advance rapidly, coupled with ever-changing consumer behaviours. Rather than view digital transformation as an end goal, organisations will have to consider it a constant process that will enable them to adapt, evolve, and drive forward change within their field. Ideally, it is the state of flow that all businesses should be striving for.
Get in touch to find out how Digital Transformation can revolutionise your business.
