Data Strategy Detail: Business Agility


We have covered two directions that a data strategy can go over the last few days, how to make good fast decisions and how to connect with your customer.  Today we are going to see how a data strategy can help your organization respond to changing business conditions.

Change is the only thing we can guarantee in our businesses.  When this happens in a market segment that your organization is competing in are you leading in adapting to the change or are you following?  The difference in some situations can be fatal. According to data from the bureau of labor, 20% of small businesses fail during their first year of operations.  Now there are a lot of factors that play into that but one of them is not being able to adapt to the business environment that they find themselves in.  So how can a data strategy turn your organization into a trend setter?

Well to see the change coming you need data.  Lots and lots of data.  So, a data strategy that is focused on keeping your business agile needs to focus on gathering and analyzing that data.  Having terabytes of data will not help you if you don’t have the people and resources needed to dig into it and see what patterns come out.  An agile focused data strategy would do the following things:

  • Centralize data. One of the biggest challenges to business agility is data silos. When data is siloed, it can be difficult to access and use, which can slow down decision-making and make it difficult to identify trends and opportunities. By centralizing data, organizations can make it easier to access and use data, which can help them respond to change more quickly.  This can be done in many ways including implementing a data fabric.  We will talk about that at a later date.
  • Use cloud computing. Cloud computing can help organizations improve their data agility in a number of ways. First, cloud computing can provide a scalable and elastic platform for storing and processing data. This means that organizations can easily add or remove capacity as needed, which can be important for responding to sudden changes in demand. Second, cloud computing can make it easier to share data across different departments and teams. This can help organizations break down data silos and improve collaboration.
  • Invest in data analytics. Data analytics can help organizations make better decisions by providing insights into their data. By analyzing data, organizations can identify trends, patterns, and anomalies that can help them understand their customers, markets, and operations. This information can then be used to make better decisions about everything from product development to pricing to marketing.
  • Empower employees with data. Not only should organizations invest in data analytics, but they should also empower employees with data. This means giving employees the tools and training they need to access and use data to make decisions. By empowering employees with data, organizations can improve their decision-making at all levels.
  • Create a data-driven culture. This means making data a core part of the organization's decision-making process.  No more “gut” calls.  Show me the data should be the first sentence in any decision making scenario.
  • Invest in data governance. This means establishing policies and procedures for managing data quality, security, and privacy. This may not be the first thing on the list but it is one of the most imperative tasks to accomplish.  No one can make a good decision with bad data.
  • Automate data processes. This can help to free up time and resources so that employees can focus on more strategic tasks.
  • Use agile development methodologies. This can help organizations to quickly and easily respond to changes in the market.  This step will also be one of the hardest to accomplish.  Remember to be flexible at this step.  There are many different ways to be agile, find the best path for you and your team.

Some of these steps will take time and considerable resources.  That is where your data strategy road map comes into play.  By comparing your road map to business outcomes, you will be able to relate the changes in your organization to when your organization starts becoming more agile.  That relationship will be how you demonstrate that your data strategy is accomplishing its goals.  And that gradual change will slowly move your organization into a leadership position. 

No organization sets out to fail but at times organizations have not seen what was coming fast enough to adapt.  With the proper data strategy your organization can avoid that fate.  

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