When we talk about digital transformation, we’re often discussing an organisation’s ability to seize the opportunities available in a digital economy. Whether those are opportunities for greater efficiency, productivity, and innovation, or if we simply want to unlock new business in our marketplace, our ability to seize these opportunities is pivotal to the time it takes us to derive insights from our data.

With data, digital transformation is about how quickly you can turn unprocessed data into information, and how easily that information can be analysed and used throughout your business for informing decisions and driving change.

To date, this process is still heavily reliant on central IT teams to provide access to data, which then requires weeks to reformat. While we have the ability to collect vast amounts of data about our customers, turning this data into meaningful information for actionable insights is beyond the capabilities of the majority of your employees.

Our research has shown that 95% of the C-level executives believe than data is integral to business strategy; a sentiment that have grown by 15% compared to the year before (2018 Global Data Management Benchmark Report). Meanwhile, in a study by 74% of firms say they want to be more data-driven, only 29% say they’re good at connecting analytics to action.

To derive the insights, you need from your organisation’s data, you need to empower your employees to understand its value and set potential for creating new business opportunities. Once they see the importance and need for insights to help them perform their role more effectively, they would require a data solution to meet this need.

When selecting a data solution, it’s essential to involve stakeholders from every business unit so they can weigh in on evaluation and selection criteria. Be realistic about who needs to use the solution, and choose the capabilities and features that match their job roles and skill sets.

Consider systems that are easy to integrate and intuitive to use. This means users are only required to have subject matter knowledge, as opposed to specific technical skills for using the data solution. It should be a simple process to make use of data as each user sees fit. This includes the ease of which they can access large volumes of data that can be summarised into insights for a range of requirements that can differ every day.

I’ve mentioned in a previous article that the data solutions which are easiest to adopt, and use will ultimately encourage a more proactive, self-service culture when it comes to creating insights from data. This is one of the main goals of digital transformation- empowering everyone within your organisation to make the best use of technology.

Alan Thornton
General Manager, Data Quality Southeast Asia