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Today’s enterprise operations are intrinsically linked to the IT systems and infrastructures that sustain them. Yet, many businesses are not seeing their expected returns for all their investments. Over the last several years, there has been a massive movement toward digitising business processes and the customer experience across the enterprise. Combining data analytics with intelligent, automated technologies was supposed to provide organisations stability in a volatile world.
Typically, businesses transitioning to digital processes and automated systems have two goals. They want to retain their profitability and competitive edge amid changing customer preferences and behaviours, increased regulatory demands, market disruptions, increased competition, and uncertainty. Ironically, when the company’s infrastructure fails to support leaders’ pursuit of these goals, the reaction is usually to pour more time, money, and energy into the system.
Not only is that a waste of resources, but it needs to address underlying problems. Data is still currently a largely untapped corporate asset.
Why are organisations failing to deliver the desired results despite investing in state-of-the-art data capture and analytics tools and having data analytics and digital transformation strategies in place? The answer is because of misconceptions about digital transformation. “Going digital” means more than having the latest tools and systems. Companies must realign their entire operations around digital processes, defined explicitly with insights and goals driven by data, to keep pace with change successfully and profitably.
Before any successful digital transformation can deliver results, the organisation must undergo “data transformation.” The first step is recording, organising, and even analysing critical data. It is also the easiest part of the process. The real work involves harnessing this data to guide corporate decisions made across an organisation, and to do this, a company needs a data-driven culture. In a data-driven culture, using data to drive business decisions is the core strategic process.
Data gathering, management, and analytics are transformed from business expenses into business-owned, patented resources. Business leaders are also focused on making data accessible to employees and giving them the power to leverage it. To do this, several resources ensure the correct data gets to the right person at the right time. Most tools and data-focused third-party platforms will typically be powered by artificial intelligence technologies, which will help companies entirely use their data and provide employees with the necessary time and insight to operate effectively.
Unlike building IT infrastructure, data-driven cultures cannot be bought or built, nor is there a single-size-fits-all solution you can plug into. Senior corporate leaders must assess their organisation’s unique needs and goals and plan, foster, and cultivate internal changes.
How can leaders efficiently build a data-driven culture? Whenever leaders communicate with employees about strategic business decisions, they should often reference data they use to reach their conclusions. Business leaders must be aware of data contradicting their assumptions or beliefs. When a business-wide objective is met and the message is delivered to employees, this may be coupled with data about what helped the company succeed. The best tools and processes can be put in place, but they are of no help unless employees use them correctly. Companies must design employee training programs and track outcomes to see how successful those programs are.
Leaders should also solicit employee feedback to identify gaps in knowledge and show employees the implications of data-informed decisions. Finally, employees making decisions informed by data must see how data impacts their choices.
For example, frontline employees might see results from customer satisfaction surveys and sales conversion figures tied to them. In contrast, back-office employees might know the number of errors they have made and the performance they have achieved. In short, the success of the digital business transformation depends on the extent to which an organisation uses critical data points to drive the process. This is very much an enterprise-wide endeavour. When all operations and decisions work toward a single objective, the company becomes a machine well-oiled for success in the modern business landscape.
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