Big data is ruling in every organisation. It gives the power to make informed, well-evaluated decision making for a concrete strategy in an organisation. But it has to be noted that it’s not just the technical or data science and analytics team that has to deal with data. For a successful functioning of an organisation, it is necessary that everyone in an organisation is comfortable dealing with data.
The Challenge
The main challenge with introducing data is that not only the people involved in this culture should be comfortable with data, but they should also be well-versed with the technology that comes with it. The whole integrating data science into an organisation is a very collaborative culture, and it is important to pay attention to people’s skills.
Another challenge comes with developing a collaborative approach and giving equal importance to everyone in the organisation irrespective of the pay rate because dependencies can be frightening.
More often, teams rely on the data which is available at hand and analyse it, ignoring the need to seek more data for a more detailed, complete picture. Getting the hang of a complete data is important which is often gone wasted.
What Can Be Done?
In order to develop a data culture among teams, it is important to encourage everyone in the organization to be encouraged to adopt the culture. Breaking down organisational and data silos that prevent collaboration and data optimisation would help, in order to achieve that.
1.Educate the employees:
Applying smart change management methods to educate and get people on board and subscribing to data governance principles strengthening accountability and transparency also helps. It is important to become data-driven first and then focus on data-optimisation strategies.
2.Every department has to realise the power of data:
Adding a data tech talent in the team helps. Data and technology are not the responsibility of a single function in an enterprise, anymore. Sales and marketing people comprehend the power of inculcating a data-driven technical talent in an organisation, competent in solving data challenges. Increasing data literacy among employees is always a good initiative. Data literacy must be among the entire organisation through collaboration and not just a handful of employees. Each employee being data literate will make him feel more comfortable with new technologies. It will also help in increasing their confidence that will come because of upskilling.
3.Upskilling the employees:
Upskilling the already available workforce is also a good way to combat this problem. Organising frequent events and internal knowledge sharing platform for the employees helps big time. Maintaining data quality is another concern.
4.Adopt methods for data cleaning:
A satisfactory amount of time must be invested in evaluating the data for errors. There can also be an adoption commercially available software to cleanse the data and improving the data quality.
Data is very pervasive and hence it reaches beyond people’s professional, designated trades. Everyone in an organisation has a role in data, either as a data owner, a data process owner or simply as a user, and hence, it is important for everyone to be comfortable dealing with it.
According to Christine Overby of Postshift, a diagnostic approach provides the benchmark data that helps in the following:
- Identify the different digital maturity levels across business units, brands, and regions
- Create transparency for board-level management and reporting
- Focus the central transformation team to close the biggest gaps or to double down on your strengths
- Ensure strategic alignment so people work smarter, not harder to achieve digital priorities
In Conclusion
Organisations keen on making use of data for precise and well-informed decision-making will be successful in the market and will be easily able to adapt to changing conditions and fulfilling customer needs, compared to the data-challenged competitors.
Data has become a primary goal and requirement of organisations today in the market and everyone in the organisation must be comfortable with it being used for success in the market.
