Becoming a Data-Driven Enterprise
In a data-driven enterprise, data consistently drives decision making and performance while greatly easing the travails associated with reporting and compliance
Data also drives the foundational elements — People, Processes & Technology needed for driving effective transformations while enable constant benchmarking and course correction.
Becoming a data-driven enterprises requires a change in mindset to treat data as an asset that can radically transform how decisions, products and services are supported!
So what does it take for being Data-Driven enterprise?
It starts with adopting a Listening Mindset
It is not about what you want your data to say, it is about what your data is telling you!
In one of my consulting assignments, the plans for the creation of a new App for enabling merchant transactions was being drawn up. The App would inherit several features from its predecessor and then add substantial features of its own in future releases.
To the business lead who was handling the app initiative, I asked — Why did the earlier app fail?
No crisp answers, general statements around — Lack of features and a Clumsy interface.
In transformations, survivorship and self-serving biases are to be overcome. It is most important to understand why something didn’t work through data investigation, so as to avoid repeating the mistakes!
However, what did a look at the data from the usage analytics and call centre logs tell us?
- The maximum drop happens during the registration process — it is much too complicated and asks the user for a terrible lot of information
- The transaction fees levied by the company are higher than its peers in the industry!
- The time to credit the money in the account was much higher than that of its peers
- There is no understanding/learning provided for the existing features
Any real issues with the technology that was being used? Not really! Looks like a case that could be solved in a much simpler manner!
Let the data have the loudest voice in the decision rooms!
You should be able to say — we have a Single Source of Truth
With multiple departments, also comes the problem of silos. Each department, instead of tapping into a central data lake, creates its own data repository and lakes, thus duplicating information. These duplicate lakes are constantly fed using undocumented batch jobs and manual updates — a recipe for disaster!
In an organization where I was consulting for Data Strategy, they had a beautiful case in point. At a recently held meeting of the heads, the Chief Executive received not one or two but five different NPS scores from the various departments! This led to the uncovering issues with Data Governance, Processes and Architecture for enabling a single source of truth.
A single source of data brings the organization together while speeding up the decision making process and enforcing a common language
You know ALL your data sources
For a customer, eCommerce as a channel was being launched in addition to the wide network of Brick & Mortar stores they owned. We seemed to have started making the right investments — eCommerce, better inventory management, expansion of warehouses, setting up satellite delivery centres, creating a fleet of delivery boys and so on.
During the requirement interviews on the eCommerce portal features, I also set up a meeting with the call centre head to understand the features that he and his team would like to view on the portal. Just overheard a couple of Call centre executives responding with ‘Oh, we are so sorry — we are out of stock’ atleast twice in the current call that they were in. Had them record the missed opportunities over three days. Result — What was needed was a better demand forecasting system! We were missing orders worth millions every month! When this data was presented to the board, the decision was unanimous and the top initiatives had a new entrant.
It is really important to know all your data sources, and how and why you are going to put them to use.
In fact, the more extensive the data gathering exercise, the easier it is to get to the root of problems and solve them. This is a key differentiator when it comes to solving problems faster and coming up with innovations
Every department has access to Usable & Actionable Information
One of the talking points in one of my Digital Transformation assignments was making sense of the 400+ dashboards that existed across departments.
Guess how many were actually being used — ~35!
This is what happens when the underlying data and the relationships among the various entities is not understood. Having a robust relational model and a BI tool that makes reporting simpler, while enabling people to understand and play with the data will be the one that will stick and prove useful. Creation of base templates based on access permissions will then enable people to use the right data at the right time and in the right way.
If management decisions are still pre-dominantly gut-driven rather than Data-driven, be prepared for several decisions that wouldn’t find explanations and expected results down the line
Relevant and timely dashboards also ensure a consistent reporting for the progress on the underlying strategy.
Your Business Strategy is aligned to Data
Sure, we have an awesome strategy in place. Is it really linked to the data in the organization though? Have I thought enough of how my existing data is going to feed the success measures and the KPIs that I am planning to incorporate?
A healthcare provider wanted to provide each patient with a comprehensive understanding of the treatments, their journey and so on. Guess what, many of the information fields that were to be part of the final, smart reports were not being captured at all!
A business strategy without the support of data is like trying to drive to a new place without having connecting roads & bridges!
The vision can still be achieved, but with the groundwork needed. This had to be then taken up in phases — first, fully utilising the data that we had and making the most of it. Second, a parallel initiative to start collecting and digitising the needed information was also initiated to build the data store that would power our future dashboards and apps.
It helps to think of all data — structured, unstructured, internal and external so as better predict outcomes, forecast and plan better.
In summary,
- Listen to data — the bits and the bytes usually have more stories than we can imagine!
- Get the data together — a single, comprehensive source of truth that also binds the organization together
- Know your data sources — the more the awareness, the more are the possibilities for innovation and superlative growth
- Give people access to data and let them craft what will be most useful to them — support this with a robust data governance strategy
- Support your business strategy by a foundational data strategy — the platform will ensure scalable growth and achievement of objectives
