Your business is information-driven. You make decisions based on data. And the more data you have at your fingertips, the better off you’ll be. Even though we live in a rapidly digital world, many businesses struggle to adopt digital strategies and adopt new digital tools for operating their businesses more efficiently and effectively. In this blog post, you’ll learn how to build a data-driven business by implementing six steps that will transform your company from a follower of trendsetters into an innovator of their own.
Determine your business goals
Before you can adopt any digital strategy, you’ll need to clearly understand your business goals. This is the first step toward building a data-driven business. Your business goals will help you define what data you want to collect, how you’ll store it, and what you’ll do with it once you have it.
Assign key roles in your organization
When it comes to data management, every department has a role. You’ll have analysts who will collect data, data scientists who will analyze it and business leaders who will decide how to use the data and what kind of impact it has on the business. When you assign key roles to key employees, you give them permission to make decisions based on the data they collect, the analyses they perform and the decisions they make.
Create a data-driven business strategy
Once you’ve determined what data you want to collect, create a data-driven business strategy. This is the backbone of any digital strategy. Data-driven business strategies are focused on two things: – Data collection – Data analysis Both data collection and data analysis are essential to any data-driven strategy. But data collection is more important than you might think. Every business wants to collect data. But not every business has the tools or the desire to collect data. That’s why having a data strategy is so important. Having a data strategy will give you a path forward. It will help you identify what data you need, why you need it, and what data processing and analysis will do for your business.
Set actionable goals
You’ve defined what data you want to collect, what data processing and analysis will do for your business and how you’ll store and use the data once you have it. Now it’s time to set actionable goals. What are actionable goals? These are goals with measurable goals. By setting actionable goals, you not only set yourself up for success but also give your team members confidence to succeed. Actionable goals will help your team members focus on what they do best. Having actionable goals will make your data scientists, analysts and data managers feel more comfortable contributing to your success.
Measure, Monitor and Report
Data-driven businesses collect and analyze data to make informed decisions. But how do you know when all the data you’ve acquired is valuable enough to report? To assess the value of data, you’ll need to measure it. And there are many ways to measure data. One way is to look at the “value-in-use” (Vii) metric. Vii is the overall impact of your data. Another way to measure impact is “value-at-mining” (VaM). VaM is the same metric but with a focus on the ROI of the data acquisition effort.
Conclusion
Digital transformation is a shared aspiration across industries. Companies are embracing this transformation to reach new levels of competitiveness and success. But it’s not just about technology. It’s about culture, management and a willingness to change with the times. To be data-driven, you’ll need to implement a data-driven business strategy, set actionable goals and measure, monitor and report on the data you collect and the impact that data has on your business.
