Cloud technology has enabled increasing amounts of information to be created and stored, and as a result, data volumes have exploded. It’s estimated that 90 percent of the data in the world was created in the last two years. 

Data is the bedrock of innovation, but it’s not useful on its own. Its value comes from the informative insights you can gain from it that are then used to make businesses more agile. Trends and insights can be determined and then used to make better decisions and create more innovative products and services. The digitisation of manufacturing, including Industry 4.0, is a good example of how the enormous volumes of data and real-time analysis drive innovation. 

However, this data is often sitting in databases untouched. Data is often stored in different formats, in a variety of systems, with many access points. Building, evaluating, deploying, and monitoring data can be a complex process. Firstly, data scientists prepare data for analysis, including cleansing, aggregating, and manipulating it to perform advanced analysis. This is followed by analytic applications where data analysts draw informed insights to promote business transformation.

In a Gartner survey of more than 3,000 CIOs, respondents ranked data analytics and business intelligence as the top differentiating technology for their organisations. The CIOs see these technologies as the most strategic for their companies.

Unlock your data                     

To determine the best tools and processes to digitally transform your business, many questions need to be asked:

• What kind of data does your business use?
• What kind of working methods do you prefer?
• What kind of data sources are you using?
• What are your key business performance indicators?

After answering these questions, many data and analytics leaders are increasingly implementing self-service capabilities to create a data-driven culture throughout their organisation. This means business users can more easily learn to use and benefit from effective analytics and Business Intelligence (BI) tools, driving favourable business outcomes in the process.

Create a data-driven business

Big Data, Business Intelligence, and Business Analytics are all familiar terms in today’s world, but what do they mean to your business? Before planning a successful and sustainable business strategy, a number of key factors need to be considered:

• Active buy-in and interest from top managers - Building a data strategy requires multi-level organisational buy-in to contribute energy and resources.

• Understand what business metrics are needed to enable easier decisions – what key data do you need to make the business more successful? To make data useful, you need to define key business metrics for each area of the organisation. 

• Use analytics to help employees, not just customers – knowledge about your business doesn’t just improve customer service levels. it can also help with internal processes and ensure employees benefit from best business practices.

• Be flexible but maintain consistency across departments – data is often stored in silos throughout the business and collated in a piecemeal way. By focusing on a data strategy, the collation of data becomes more streamlined. This enables unified data analysis across departments.

• Explain analytical choices and understand how problems are approached – data does not exist without people, systems and processes. By understanding how and why these all interact, you better understand key data analytics, thereby enabling more informed, strategic business decisions.

Harness the power of data in your business

By collecting and analysing your data, you will provide valuable insights to future trends and future proof your business in a challenging and ever-changing world. The information you need will be at your fingertips exactly when you need it most.

Kagool can help you figure out how to make your business more efficient, cutting costs and increasing productivity. We’ll talk you through the processes and benefits of data driven business decisions. If you’d like to chat, or if you just want more information about using your data more effectively, please get in touch.