How to turn your data into a competitive advantage
According to McKinsey’s Age of Analytics report, most companies are capturing only a fraction of the potential value from data, with the public sector, healthcare and manufacturing industries particularly struggling to capitalize on the opportunity.
There is no shortage of intelligence flooding today’s organizations, but greater volumes of data don’t always transform into strategic value. So, what does it take to turn your data into a competitive advantage?
Driving better, quicker decision-making
Many companies are focused on using their data to empower better decision making across the organization and drive quick, agile responses to developments in the market. In other words, making their business intelligence actionable. But this is difficult when your data is stale or difficult to access.
A report from business intelligence company Domo, reveals that 28% of UK CEOs are reliant on intelligence that is a week old and just one third have access to it in real time. 71% of UK CEOs believe that failure to have a centralized data source and to be consistent around the technology and tools used is adding an additional barrier to the extraction and effective organization-wide sharing of information.
Opening data analysis to the whole business
A good starting point is to move away from the costly, outdated stand-alone tools that confine business intelligence to a desktop and to stop relying on time-consuming, manual processes. The new breed of BI solutions, fuelled by cloud technology, can aggregate sharable real-time data through a mobile app. Not only does this automate and speed up business processes, but it also brings an agility that helps to integrate data analysis in a simpler way across the business.
Most of these user-friendly analytical tools are able to draw analyses into one central dashboard and use visualization software that makes it easier to interpret analytical trends and complex data. This opens the practice of analyses far beyond the IT department and data analysts to almost anyone in the business. This can drive performance in many new and exciting ways.
For more information on tools that support your data strategy, get in touch.
