Being a data driven organization is not related to an organizations’ size, location, or industry. Data-driven organizations can be small service providers, large financial institutions, or mid-sized non-governmental organizations. They may have a small IT team or have advanced business intelligence practices and employ data scientists. There is basically no single prescribed way to becoming a data-driven organization, but there are definite common attributes and practices in those that succeed… let’s look at a few of them.
1. Leaders who run their businesses with passion and curiosity
In addition to a traditional metric-driven approach where KPIs are defined and tracked being data-driven requires a different mindset. One where the curiosity leads to digging into data and extracting insights that can be used to steer the business in the winning direction. Leaders are constantly questioning what the company is doing and their own role in making it successful.
2. Data Literacy
Successful data-driven organizations educate their analytical and non-analytical stuff on how to use data correctly. Ability to read, work with and analyze data is a skill that empowers teams to ask the right questions, build knowledge and communicate data driven insights to others.
3. Data Democratization
A data-driven company makes data instantly accessible to all members and stakeholders, regardless of their technical backgrounds. This enables the entire team to make data-driven decisions quickly.
4. Data Availability and Accessibility
Useful data can be found everywhere; in databases, business intelligence tools, sensors, file servers, reports, laptops… literally everywhere within the organization. The key is being resourceful and educated enough to know where to get it and how to validate it. Data-driven companies centralize and organize data only when needed without confining it. Data-driven organizations always protect their data from outside threats while encouraging internal data analytics and exploration. Using modern data governance for protecting and restricting access to sensitive information is a key.
5. Data Quality
Most organizations understand that data quality is important, but data-driven organizations know that it is as important as the data itself. Identifiable data sources and established data stewardship programs are a key to reliable and trustworthy data-driven decision making.
6. Diverse Data
Having a lot of data is great, but having a lot of variety of data sources is even better. Data-driven organizations don’t rely on single source reporting they employ a variety of data sources to extract, compare and validate the insights.
Advances in data acquisition, storage, integration, and analytics technologies revolutionize the traditional approaches to supporting data-driven decision making. Organizational leaders should explore new strategies, invest in the right accelerators to modernize their organizations, enable data-driven decision making and fuel growth.
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Alex Kachar is a Solutions Architect with over 15 years of experience in developing and delivering Business Intelligence and Analytics solutions, executing Data Governance programs and managing high-performance development teams.
As the Chief Technology Officer, Alex is responsible for the design and architecture of secure, reliable and scalable business solutions. Alex’s wide range of consulting experience brings a unique perspective on analytics, accurate and reliable decision-making and innovation across industries.