Data drives key strategic decisions within organisations. New product and service developments, improvements to the user experience, launching into new markets, understanding customer behaviour, detecting patterns in productivity, reducing risk and operational losses to name a few. Still many companies are failing to harness their data properly and get blinded by the sheer volume of data. Zoe Cunningham and our data experts recently shared some practical tips and advice on how to use data to thrive during and post lockdown with a short interactive masterclass.
Key takeaways from the latest masterclass:
When discussing previous projects the team have worked on, they highlighted the importance of driving your company’s business decisions with data rather than financial reports. Potentially controversial when the CFO holds the purse strings. Although this session focused on data, it has to be understood in context – consider how your product or service is consumed to create insight from the data for better decision making. Brings to mind this ad campaign from Adobe Marketing Cloud – although marketing focused you get the idea; data without insight leads to bad business decision making.
Why is data so important right now? The pace of the market is slowing, as we all begin to navigate the upcoming recession, now is the perfect time to look into your data ecosystem and test your business model and assumptions with the data you have. Focus on the long term goals and act on those short term gains, what can you do this quarter to increase your businesses competitive advantage? Through uncertainty there is always opportunity. For change, for reshaping technical architecture to ensure it supports the business and a constant need to adapt at pace. The pandemic may have highlighted some weaknesses in your tech stack – now is the time to dig deeper, connect and organise your databases.
How to demonstrate the benefits of a data project and low-cost tools available
Focus on a small part of the business such as the summary reports of profits and losses, and build an MVP (minimal viable project). This will help you to kickstart your journey and enable you to focus your project and highlight the outcome you are looking for.
- KNIME a free data tool that doesn’t require any programming language
- Tableau Public and Microsoft Power BI offer limited free versions of their paid software
Poll: How well are you using data in your organisation?
Results:
20%: ‘We use data to drive all our strategic decisions’
64%: ‘We only have meaningful data around parts of the business’
9%: ‘We have lots of data, but we don’t know how to use it’
0%: ‘We don’t have a case for using data’
This is just a snapshot of what was covered, listen now to hear about:
- The advantage of moving your data into the cloud
- The different assets you need to get a data project going
- Stakeholder management, why it’s important and how to approach it
- The benefits of a data cleanse
- Ensuring accuracy when looking at insights
What are Softwire Masterclasses?
Softwire have launched a series of interactive, 15-minute masterclasses to help with those socialising cravings and to provide the industry with insights and tools for ensuring companies are supported throughout these unprecedented times. Attendees will not only get to see some new faces, but they will also receive expert advice on adapting and working in an agile way to help them keep on track for success. These short, interactive sessions are designed to be a quick burst of knowledge that doesn’t disrupt day-to-day activities.
