More and more businesses are finding that Big Data is a valuable tool to have in their arsenal. Big Data involves extracting useful information from within and without the company, and using the data to make data-driven business decisions, which apparently are supposed to be better than normal business decisions because the data can be used to back them up. The key to becoming a data-driven company is to not just gather data and look at it once in a while, but to approach every decision by analyzing relevant data and letting the conclusions drawn from the data speak for themselves and guide your company. The idea is that decisions made based on hard data are more reliable than decisions made based on instinct or assumptions, which can be faulty. Data can help you identify trends, make you aware of issues, and help you find innovations or solutions to problems. It can also help employees find ways to improve. But the trick is to make sure that, will all the data you end up gathering, you use the right data to gather your insights and don’t get led astray.
How does one become a more data-driven business?
As with any major action, you want to have a plan in place first. Develop a strategy to help you focus and weed out any data you don’t need. First, understand what your current state is. How are you currently making decisions? Do you have what you need to become data-driven? Is data accessible to everyone? Then set some clear goals as to what you want data to do for your business. Consider buildiing your strategy around your business objectives.
Take an inventory of your current data. Find out what data you have and where it is (you very well could have data in multiple places). Once you have it, consolidate it into one place so you can easily what you have and can easily access it.
Identify the key areas where data is coming from that will be key to meeting your strategy. These areas are the ones you will target sets of data from. Target data according to your business objectives to gain the most useful insights and also keep the cost of data storage down.
Make sure employees are able to access your data when they need it. Allowing more users access to it will allow for more insights to be gained from it.
Collect your data and have it analyzed. As mentioned in #4, the more people who have access to the data, the more information and insights can be gained, so be sure to have it accessible. Set up networks and integrated systems if needed.
Once you’ve gained the information and insights from the data, present it to the decision makers in a way that shows how it can be used for the business and what actions need to be taken.
Don’t let yourself get overwhelmed. Becoming data-driven isn’t something that can be done overnight. It’s something that will require a lot of work. So don’t try to do it all at once. Instead, start small and pick one aspect of your business that will provide you with most payback and begin with it.
For more information on becoming data-driven, you can go here, here, here, here, here, and here.
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