Partner Article

Businesses: Get more from your data

Most modern businesses have the same goal: to improve the speed with which they can detect customer and market changes – and then respond to them very quickly. The good news is that, more and more, the data that companies generate and collect every day is now helping them to achieve this objective.

However, in order to extract the greatest value from this information, businesses will need to make sure that they are working with integrated data. Data bottlenecks and information siloes are the biggest enemies of being agile and responsive, so eliminating the need for time-consuming and error-prone data re-entry is vital. At the same time, businesses must ensure that they have a ‘single source of truth’, coupled with a tightly integrated flow of data across their various systems and business applications.

Ensuring that any technology investments are made with input from a cross-functional team is also an important guiding principle, regardless of how the technology will ultimately be deployed. While a company’s IT team will traditionally lead the delivery of any new technology, the availability of Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions, in particular, has made it much easier for different lines-of-business to ‘fly solo’ and choose new software that meets their specific departmental requirements, even if they don’t always have a full appreciation of how data needs to flow through the network of applications across the organisation.

Given the rising volume, range and types of data being used in business today, robust data analysis will be essential for extracting the greatest value from this information, however. The explosion of new digital channels and devices has generated more data than companies have ever imagined and, with that, a greater need for rapid and effective analysis.

In order to address this challenge, the corporate analytics toolkit is expanding rapidly, with visualisation, real-time and predictive tools now becoming a lot more mainstream. As a result, employees can now access a wide range of advanced analytics and reporting capabilities, as these tools are no longer restricted to the IT department and executive office alone.

In an age where insight, innovation and agility are the biggest enablers of competitive advantage, the world of departmental structures and Dilbert-like cubicles is quickly being replaced by a more fluid way of working in order to make the most of this vital data. Evidence of this cross-functional and dynamic collaboration can be seen in both the physical realm – with workplaces being designed and furnished in exciting and energising ways – and also in the rise of enterprise-grade social networking tools.

But can using data in this way truly help businesses to provide a better service to their customers? The short answer is yes. First of all, smart businesses can see that customer choice and expectations are increasing. Customers now have a greater choice between the companies they can do business with and, as a result, are becoming increasingly selective and more easily dissatisfied by a company when any problems arise.

As such, customer engagement must be timely and relevant, based on accurate data and real-time information. Every industry is ultimately judged by the standards set by the best, which means that businesses must be able to use this data to understand and initiate the kind of conversation that a customer wants – and on his/her choice of channel or platform, be it face-to-face or in-store, voice, online, chat, email and social networks.

Businesses must also learn to use this kind of information to provide an exceptional experience throughout the entire lifecycle of the relationship. For example, companies must be prepared to engage with customers who expect additional value to be added to the usual systems of record.

Needless to say, a company’s employees will also play a huge role in this process. As such, businesses need to make sure that their customer-facing employees have the right processes in place to support them. Employees who are prepared with the right tools, the right data and the right processes to support those interactions are better equipped to have relevant, responsive and engaging conversations with customers.

For all these reasons, companies really need to think about the flow of data within and across their company – and determine what is working and what is not. Not only should data be captured electronically, but it should also be collected in a way that allows it to be shared and integrated across different systems and departments easily. Just as importantly, however, businesses need to instil a culture of information-sharing across the entire organisation. This way, valuable customer insight – rather than just data – can be used to support the company’s most important business decisions.

Author: Maria Casu, Head of Marketing at Portal – the business and technology consultancy

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Portal .