Overarching market trends, the evolution and explosion of data, and the acceleration of technology are fundamentally changing such that companies need to implement a modern data strategy to be competitive. When embarking on new data projects, these are the top five following challenges we’re seeing business and IT leaders face:
- Lack of Alignment to Business Outcomes.
- Too Many Data Silos.
- Fragmented Data.
- No Data-Driven Culture.
- Skills and Knowledge Gap.
Lack of Alignment to Business Outcomes
The biggest challenge we see is that data and analytics projects are often seen as solely technology projects, making these projects disconnected from business objectives. When business leaders view data and analytics projects as more than just a technology improvement, they align them to business priorities. This ensures their data and analytics are set up to support the business goals, and that they can deliver real insights from their data.
Too Many Data Silos
When data exists in many different formats and in lots of different locations, it’s not easy for business users to find and use that data. Without a proper way to catalogue and pull all the assets together in one place, you’re creating more and more redundancy across the organization.
Fragmented Data
Imagine hundreds of people trying to communicate, all from different countries who speak different languages. That’s what today’s data is like. It’s in different formats and unorganized – it doesn’t speak the same language. And it leads to data inconsistencies and, eventually, a lack of trust in the insights derived from it. In fact, it’s estimated that less than 50% of structured data collected from IoT is actually used in decision-making. Imagine if you had a universal language that they all understood – where you bring all data into a common framework to ensure consistency, integrity and validity of your data output. That’s what normalizing and integrating data does – only then can you establish trust and integrity to your data.
No Data-Driven Culture
Who’s in charge of ensuring your organization is a data-driven one? Today, that’s IT leaders. Yet, it’s not as simple as it sounds and most organizations lack the knowledge around building a data management strategy and the skills to execute it. Expertise, thought leadership, and experience is required to help companies push their data culture forward. It can’t be the responsibility of one department; rather, for organizations to truly leverage business insights, there must be enterprise-wide alignment on creating a data-driven culture.
Skills and Knowledge Gap
While IT and business leaders want to invest in new data and analytics strategies and platforms, not enough organizations are actually evaluating if the team they have today is made up of the right skills and experience to be successful. This doesn’t mean replacing your existing team, but rather identifying skills gaps and bringing in expert opinions who can help fill those gaps in the short-term while teaching your existing in-house team to leverage new platforms. These challenges all lie to missed opportunities and lost revenue. In fact, it’s estimated that companies that harness big data’s full power could increase their operating margins by up to 60%.
Whether you’re planning to build in-house or buy off the shelf, you can’t afford to skip any steps in the process. Our Data Strategy Roadmap can help you get started on your data automation journey today!
