Five Characteristics of a Data Driven Company
What exactly makes an organization more data driven in the digital age?
The increasing importance of data driven strategies for competitive differentiation has been boosted by the availability of big data, lightning-fast development of data analytics software, and more inexpensive computing power.
In fact, according to Forrester’s analysis, data driven organizations harnessing insights across their organization are growing at a rate of more than 30% per year.
Even though many companies have implemented business intelligence and hired data scientists, they still have a long way to go before becoming data driven.
While there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to becoming a data driven organization, we do see common characteristics and practices among those successful cases.
Literacy
The capacity to read, manage, understand, story tell, and debate with data(!) is data literacy. Data literacy is a primary focus for employees in a data driven company. Some data driven businesses have implemented initiatives to assist employees with becoming more data literate.
Companies that try to make data literacy more commonplace have seen increased engagement levels.
Moreover, employees with data literacy abilities are also better able to assist customers with data-based customer support inquiries.
Leadership
Businesses need to ensure that the right individuals oversee efforts to create data driven organizations.
A driven executive should be creative, curious, and passionate. The best data management professionals use data to make decisions and aren’t afraid to take risks.
A forward-thinking data management executive can help develop the entire business’s data driven culture with the right strategy.
For example, instead of focusing on key performance indicators, a determined business executive can invest in infrastructure for data driven processes. The ideal executive will challenge practical or traditional techniques.
Democratization
Unfortunately, even companies that claim to have a data driven organizational culture can fail to provide the appropriate data access to their staff.
These organizations may:
Deny employees access to relevant data, causing the entire organization to suffer
Force employees to seek information through inefficient and formal processes
Cause employees to feel untrustworthy because of the lack of access to relevant work information
Executives must ensure that the correct data is provided to staff as quickly as possible, to encourage data literacy for a data driven business.
Simply put, the democratization of data management within enterprises requires accessibility.
Automation
Analyzing the automation of data management workloads is one of the most important criteria for determining whether a company is data driven.
Data-driven insights are a fantastic tool, but they aren’t truly data driven if they aren’t properly integrated into business processes.
Businesses profit from the automation of data management workloads in many ways.
Two benefits include:
Optimized data driven decision making
Reassessment of corporate strategies
It’s important to remember that manual tactics like business intelligence reports and dashboards might backfire. Manual data management touchpoints can obstruct anything from data collection to data storage.
Culture
People may be overly focused on tools and technology when thinking of big data and digital transformation. However, a data driven organization focuses on developing a data driven company culture. Everything from the efficiency of data strategy to data literacy levels is influenced by company culture. Creating a great data culture is a team effort that many businesses struggle with.
A data driven culture aims to make data more accessible and democratized. Employees who successfully use data analytics can make data driven decisions and have a great understanding of their own role in the organization.
For example, if employees can clearly see how their work efforts positively impact their organization, they are more motivated and driven to perform well.
A data-driven company promotes customer success and business success – positively impacting the bottom line and profitability.
