Business Insights: Evolve Your Company Using Data

Research by Statista shows that data quality (incomplete, inaccurate, or redundant data) is among the most important factors standing in the way of using data to drive business value. There are 6 dimensions of Data quality:

• Accuracy
• Completeness
• Freshness
• Uniqueness
• Consistency

Search for ways to get data that meets these criteria.

Identify internal stakeholders

Who are the stakeholders who will be using this data? It can be top management, sales, data engineers and analytics teams, or even the whole organization. The extent to which this data has to be processed before it reaches you depends on the skills of the people who will be using it.

Another thing to consider is the role of your technology teams. If alternative data vendors supply you with large amounts of data, you will need people with technical skills to process and prepare it for analysis. As an alternative, companies can consider purchasing already processed data from data vendors in the form of insight reports.

To put it simply, data itself is not enough if people in the company don’t have the analytical and technical skills needed to utilize it. A recent research also proves this point. Employees’ lack of analytical skills is the biggest challenge in companies trying to use data to drive business value.

Lastly, be resourceful and utilize the data you have as much as you can. If you think that the intelligence your management or another department has could benefit other teams in your company, invent a process to prepare it for universal use cases and give them access. According to HubSpot, data misalignment among different teams is one of the main challenges companies are facing with big data.

In conclusion

Extracting actionable business insights requires accurate data and analytical skills, but the results can strengthen your business strategies and processes. If your organization needs large amounts of data to support this component of your business, you should consider incorporating alternative data.

Building an internal structure that can utilize this information to the fullest extent can become the core of your company’s business insights. Evaluate your goals, and align them with a solution that can make an impact.