Has your company reached ‘data maturity’?

Data is the foun­da­tion of any strong busi­ness. If you don’t have insight into how your busi­ness is oper­at­ing then you won’t be able to man­age — let alone see — the risks you’re tak­ing. Recent his­to­ry has taught us the val­ue of plan­ning for the unex­pect­ed. Yet beyond glob­al pan­demics, there are new tech­ni­cal, legal and busi­ness chal­lenges spring­ing up all the time. As this hap­pens, the com­pa­nies that suc­ceed are those which can best exploit the data they have to gain insights and make deci­sions about where to go next.

The issue often isn’t a lack of data but that com­pa­nies can end up with too much data spread across dif­fer­ent sys­tems that require dif­fer­ent skills to access and analyse. Near­ly four in five organ­i­sa­tions make use of data from more than 100 dif­fer­ent sources, with 30% mak­ing use of over 1,000, while near­ly 80% store more than half of that data across mul­ti­ple cloud ser­vices. The data usu­al­ly exists, some­where, but all too often can­not be accessed or analysed to give use­ful insights.

Organ­i­sa­tions need more than just data, they need ‘data matu­ri­ty’, which means serv­ing the right data, to the right peo­ple, at the right time. The data needs to be high qual­i­ty, high­ly rel­e­vant and com­pli­ant with reg­u­la­tions. The cor­rect peo­ple need access to it — whether that’s the CEO who needs high-lev­el strate­gic insights or a mar­ket­ing man­ag­er who wants to under­stand the per­for­mance of a spe­cif­ic cam­paign. And the time needs to be right: it’s not good enough to under­stand what’s already hap­pened, you need to be able to see what’s hap­pen­ing now and have a view of the future through tools such as pre­dic­tive ana­lyt­ics.

Yet with the busi­ness land­scape con­stant­ly chang­ing, even the data a com­pa­ny is man­ag­ing can present risks as the impor­tant infor­ma­tion they need to col­lect evolves. For instance, the amount of data relat­ing to envi­ron­men­tal, social and gov­er­nance (ESG) issues that a busi­ness needs to under­stand is increas­ing. In the next few months, new reg­u­la­tions for firms oper­at­ing in the UK will require report­ing on the risks and oppor­tu­ni­ties pre­sent­ed by cli­mate change, while those oper­at­ing in the EU will need to abide by new rules requir­ing dis­clo­sure of the impact the firm has on cli­mate change mit­i­ga­tion and adap­ta­tion.

Beyond reg­u­la­tion, firms are deal­ing with con­sumers who have a grow­ing envi­ron­men­tal, polit­i­cal, and social con­science about what they buy, how they buy and who they buy from. It’s not enough to label a prod­uct as sus­tain­able, busi­ness­es need to tru­ly under­stand their entire sup­ply chain to ensure every part of it actu­al­ly lives up to the envi­ron­men­tal and soci­etal impacts they want to claim on the final prod­uct. Con­verse­ly, sup­pli­ers need to ensure they can deliv­er high-qual­i­ty data about what they’re sup­ply­ing; com­pa­nies them­selves will increas­ing­ly make pur­chas­ing deci­sions based on the account­abil­i­ty of the sup­ply chain they’re hook­ing into.

One answer is to use a stan­dard­ised data man­age­ment plat­form that can deliv­er this lev­el of matu­ri­ty by ensur­ing the right lev­el of data qual­i­ty, com­pli­ance and access is avail­able to help staff dri­ve busi­ness deci­sions. This process doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly require thou­sands of hours of man­u­al work; increas­ing­ly machine learn­ing and AI can be lever­aged to ensure that the data is of high qual­i­ty and that its pre­sen­ta­tion com­plies with GDPR and oth­er gov­er­nance rules, for exam­ple mask­ing per­son­al data where nec­es­sary.

With this in place, firms can bet­ter under­stand the data they’ve gath­ered and turn it into action­able insight. As Greg Han­son of Infor­mat­i­ca puts it: “Our intel­li­gent data man­age­ment cloud has helped organ­i­sa­tions dri­ve acqui­si­tion and reten­tion with a more accu­rate view of a cus­tomer and their inter­ac­tions with the busi­ness.”

He points to the exam­ple of Ver­i­zon, who gained bet­ter insight into their cus­tomers jour­neys through hav­ing a cohe­sive data man­age­ment plat­form. As a result they were able to deliv­er self-ser­vice dig­i­tal resources that ulti­mate­ly reduced call ser­vice vol­umes by 26 mil­lion a year.

The pan­dem­ic saw organ­i­sa­tions of all kinds piv­ot­ing to a dig­i­tal-first approach and deal­ing with fast-chang­ing lev­els of demand. Those that were able to imple­ment, or were already imple­ment­ing, intel­li­gent data man­age­ment expe­ri­enced huge ben­e­fits. NYC Health + Hos­pi­tals, the oper­a­tor of New York’s pub­lic health sys­tem, was able to make use of intel­li­gent data man­age­ment to stream­line its response. This cov­ered every­thing from ensur­ing health­care work­ers had bet­ter diag­nos­tic tools to the rapid cre­ation of dash­boards to doc­u­ment and fore­cast the impacts on the ser­vice. The tech­nol­o­gy now in place can be reap­plied to any future, large-scale health events.

In a dif­fer­ent field, meal deliv­ery firm HelloFresh was able to rapid­ly scale as it expe­ri­enced increased demand as peo­ple opt­ed to eat at home. This is because its robust ana­lyt­ics and fore­cast­ing sys­tems meant that change in demand was imme­di­ate­ly obvi­ous to those who need­ed to see it, even with most employ­ees work­ing remote­ly. By def­i­n­i­tion, it is not pos­si­ble to plan for unpre­dictable events, but when they hap­pen, ensur­ing that high-qual­i­ty data is imme­di­ate­ly acces­si­ble to the right deci­sion-mak­ers means they can respond quick­ly and appro­pri­ate­ly.

The pan­dem­ic and ESG reg­u­la­tions are just two exam­ples of how the risks faced by busi­ness­es will con­tin­ue to shift — both through sud­den shocks and as leg­is­la­tion, tech­nol­o­gy and the con­sumer envi­ron­ment change. Busi­ness­es need to evolve to match chang­ing risks. Those that suc­ceed will be the com­pa­nies that use data on past per­for­mance along­side real-time updates and pre­dic­tive fore­cast­ing to make high-qual­i­ty choic­es about how they oper­ate.

Too often, data man­age­ment as a dis­ci­pline hasn’t received the pri­or­i­ty or focus it deserves, but if it’s done intel­li­gent­ly it can actu­al­ly push a busi­ness for­ward. Under­stand­ing the risks means under­stand­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ties. As Han­son puts it: “Dig­i­tal matu­ri­ty is a con­tin­u­ous process, not an end­point. Tru­ly mature organ­i­sa­tions will rethink data man­age­ment imple­men­ta­tions and make the strate­gic deci­sions that will allow them to iden­ti­fy risks, piv­ot quick­ly and dri­ve val­ue.”

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it informatica.com/platform

Pro­mot­ed by Infor­mat­i­ca