Where’s the value of my data? The bottleneck in achieving data-driven commercial excellence isn’t in the technology or data

Companies have invested heavily in data technologies and people, but very few are unlocking the real value of data. The bottleneck they encounter isn’t in the technology or data teams, rather it lies in their conventional way of working.

Many believe that the key success drivers of data-driven commercial excellence are huge data platforms and data experts. So their expectation is that by hiring the right people and developing the technology, their organization will achieve next-level data-driven commercial excellence. However, the bottleneck isn’t the technology or data teams but a conventional way of working.

As millennials begin to take control of companies, I believe there will be a paradigm shift. Companies think they can change the way they operate by hiring new people and giving them access to all sorts of new technology. That’s clearly naïve, if not flat-out wrong.

Data literacy

When you’re in the driving seat, you need to make sure that everybody in the organization, from top to bottom, is increasing their analytical maturity in terms of thinking and capabilities. If you’re part of the data team, you need to make sure that you bring the business-focused people with you, encourage citizen developers, and increase awareness around tangible value.

When I talk to C-level professionals, I hear a lot of confirmation bias when it comes to data. The usual reaction to an insight is either, “We know that already” or “Nah, that can’t be true.” This cycle has to be broken. And the only way to do that is by increasing data literacy across the organization.

Our past experience underlines a well-known saying: give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime — and that’s what we do. Instead of building static dashboards or reports, we build the foundation and transform the organization so that every member of the team becomes data literate, a skill they can leverage to reach the level of data-driven commercial excellence your company is after.