The quest for organisations to become data driven

This article first appeared in the Autumn 2017 issue of The Record.

A study by the McKinsey Global Institute reported that data driven organisations can expect customer retention figures six times greater than those not data driven, and they are also 19 times as likely to be profitable.

Knowing the potential is valuable and doing something about it are two very different propositions. ‘Why?’ is a question that must be asked at the beginning of this journey. A recent report by EY revealed that 81% of organisations support the idea that data should be at the heart of everything they do, however most of these then keep their data in disparate destinations, thus dooming themselves to fail before they have even begun.

The amount of data being produced on a daily basis is absolutely huge, but still we hear organisations say that they simply don’t have enough data to be able to become data driven. This is simply not true.

What they usually mean by this statement is that the data they have is poorly managed and distributed. A central document library is the foundation for building a data driven organisation, imagine it as the base of your digital transformation pyramid. Commit to becoming data driven and get your data stored in a safe yet auditable location and you have the starting point you need to build upon.

With the advancement of IoT technologies, implementing systems that work in complete harmony across your organisation is now becoming a reality, increasing efficiency and productivity as well as reducing the resources needed to integrate new systems. The question now is how do you capture this increase in productivity? Having all this data stored in isolation is meaningless; it’s the analysis and outcomes that hold the value. Meetings are still the best way of getting people to collaborate and plan, whether these be face to face or virtual however formalising your meetings process is the crucial step most organisations miss.

Any meeting should have certain criteria that are met every time. A clear goal of the meeting and an agenda of the items you need to cover in that time frame should be the minimum that every meeting has in place before an invitation is sent. Having a secure and transparent way of sharing documents and a system for documenting actions and decisions with a clear audit trail will see your meetings effectiveness and your employees engagement massively improve, allowing you to reap the benefits of your employees decisions and ideas. This is after all what you’re paying them for, so why are you not capturing them efficiently? Setting out a step-by-step plan allows you to follow each task through to its completion, which ensures you can walk while your competitors are failing to run.