“Data is the new oil.” said Clive Humby once and then came the reply – Data is the new oil? No: Data is the new soil. Call it the fuel we are dependent on or call it the base we are established upon, there is no denial to the fact that being data-driven is the new success mantra for most of the companies. And why not, after all, data is the new science which holds an answer to most of our questions, isn’t it?
No wonder why startups and age-old Industry giants are putting to use this formula for scaling heights of success. Instincts may or may not work for creating good campaigns, but insights are sure to work. And data analysis is all you need to convert a piece of information into a meaningful insight. It is something which can be defined as information based introspection in order to excel.
This sudden and phenomenal rage for a data-informed corporate culture is a result of the newfound demographic and behavioral shift of the markets. New kinds of consumer dynamics and behavior are shaping commerce in unpredictable ways. And that is why customer-centric companies are making it a point to embed data-driven decisions and actions into the hands of staff and business partners across the organization. Only then they would be able to create a truly differentiated customer experience which of course is mandatory for them to make their mark.
I was talking about this change when one of my friend from an established startup Taskbob shared his experience on how there are workshops being conducted in his organization like ‘Dance with Data’ to train each one of them for data analysis and tabulation. And only then I did realize that ‘big data’ has now emerged as the business buzzword for the hyperlocal space as well. If data is being considered a fundamentally important asset by companies like these, then the trend of using data is well and truly into play. Democratizing data and making your employees data literate can be one sure shot way to excel.
Data driven cultures are mileposts that inform the organizations whether or not they are making progress towards their goals. The ability of data to transform can be easily measured by the fact that marketing which has been the domain of creative for decades has now culminated into a quantitative science as an exercise in art and design. And maybe that’s why democratizing data and making employees data literate is a highly followed practice now.
To put it in simple words making use of fact-based decisions to drive any business strategy, powered by analytics applied to rich data, enables the organization to more accurately define and implement the strategy and be successful. Having stated the importance of data and data analytics what we also need to understand here is that concentrating data in the hands of few individual of the company will not create a difference but integrating it to the day-to-day operations definitely will. All the difference can actually be created by translating data into an actionable insight and it is sure to work wonders.