Everybody knows data drives value.
Very few people know how data drives value.
Even fewer can tell you which data drives value or what type of analysis is best-suited to deliver actionable insight.
This is a serious problem many organizations face as they plan on leveraging data to improve operational excellence and decision-making.
There is more to digital transformation than gathering data and throwing it all into a database. Executive decision-makers need to specify which data is most important, how it should be analyzed, and what outcomes it should inform.
This is where knowledge and expertise become crucial drivers of value. No two businesses are alike, and there is no cookie-cutter solution to data strategy — every single organization follows a different path.
Organizations that want to use data to drive value need to rely on experienced consultants who can help them identify the strategy best-suited to their specific environment. Choosing the right consultant can be one of the biggest value drivers an organization can invest in today.
Data Strategy Is a Cycle
Data strategy is not a one-time investment that generates returns for the rest of your organization’s life. It takes constant work and development to hone your organizational insight on the data that matters, and adapt to changing conditions with new data strategies.
In short, data strategy is a cycle. The outcome of every data-oriented process informs the structure of future data analyses. As you adjust your strategy according to outcomes, future analyses lead to greater insight and better outcomes.
This means that in order to succeed, you need to have a robust and adaptable system in place from the very beginning. Digital transformation isn’t something you can simply buy, deploy, and forget about.
Deploy Analytics Solutions That Generate Value
Not all data analytics are the same. Only a highly qualified expert can tell which of the four main types of analytics best apply to any given business situation:
- Descriptive Analytics looks at the past and aggregates data to find out what happened. This is often the first level of analysis that organizations invest in.
- Diagnostic Analytics examines past performance data to find patterns and opportunities for improvement. This is the kind of analysis that finds out why things happened.
- Predictive Analytics focuses on the future and uses a combination of historical data and forecasting models. These data analytics solutions try to find out what will happen.
- Prescriptive Analytics generalizes responses according to predictive descriptions. That means using simulations to offer insight into what should be done in response to the outcomes that predictive analysis provides.
Gathering data for analysis is only the first step in an optimized data strategy. The next step requires leveraging available resources to create real-world outcomes informed by data analysis. This is where your strategy becomes actionable.
Why Rely on a Data Strategy Consultant?
Even the most sophisticated data gathering algorithms are only as valuable as the actions they can influence. The services of an expert data strategy consultant help identify exactly what kind of data and which kinds of analyses are best-suited to generate positive outcomes.
An expert consultant focuses on your organization’s real-world capabilities and the specific ways that data can inform those capabilities. This helps improve the efficiency of the data strategy cycle.
For instance, you may intuitively spend time and resources gathering specific types of customer data that are difficult to implement in a value-generating way. This is a very common problem amongst companies undergoing digital transformation because nobody really knows what data they will need after the transformation is complete, so they collect everything they can.
In reality, you could obtain powerful, actionable insights by gathering and analyzing just a few elements of your customers’ behaviors. This level of efficiency reduces the infrastructural weight and resource cost of your data strategy, making it more effective, cost-efficient, and adaptable for change later on.
Turn to a Data Strategy Expert Today
The success of your data strategy relies almost entirely on the degree of planning that goes into the process before digital transformation. It’s much easier to deploy an efficient, well-designed system from the beginning than to update an inefficient one, post-deployment.
Navigating the subtleties of digital transformation and data strategy is difficult without the help of an experienced guide. Only a data strategy consultant offers the insight and experience you need to ensure a smooth and robust data analytics implementation.