Studies reveal a shocking truth – less than 50% of structured data and a mere 1% of unstructured data are actively used for decision-making. Over 70% of employees have access to unauthorized data, posing a significant security risk. Also, 80% of analysts’ time is wasted on simply finding and preparing data for analysis. Well, a coherent data strategy can help you solve all these challenges. This blog will discuss 5 critical reasons to consider data strategy as a priority for business growth in 2024.
What is data strategy?
Your data strategy is the game plan, not a quick fix. It’s a long-term road map that goes beyond the data itself. It brings together the people, processes, tools, and technology to tackle your data challenges and drive your business success.
Here are some of the burning questions a data strategy can help your business answer:
- 1. Who are our ideal customers, and what do they want?
- 2. What marketing campaigns are most effective?
- 3.How can we streamline our operations and cut costs?
- 4.Are there any hidden trends in our data that could give us an edge?
Gartner defines data strategy as “a highly dynamic process employed to support the acquisition, organization, analysis, and delivery of data in support of business objectives.”
5 reasons you need a data strategy
- Deliver personalized customer experiences
Personalization is king! 80% of customers prefer organizations that offer a personalized experience. 72% of customers only respond to personalized communication.
A sound data strategy can help keep your audience hooked to your brand. By systematically collecting, analyzing, and interpreting customer data, you can gain valuable insights into individual preferences, behaviors, and needs. This can, further, enable you to tailor your products, services, and marketing efforts to resonate with each customer on a personal level.
Let’s say you are an e-commerce platform. You can use data analytics to analyze past purchase history, browsing behavior, and demographic information to deliver personalized product recommendations and targeted promotions. This personalized approach not only enhances customer satisfaction but also facilitates loyalty and drives repeat business.
- Level up decision-making
Robust data governance frameworks and advanced analytics tools can help access a wealth of information to inform your strategic and operational decisions. From market trends and customer preferences to operational performance and risk factors, data strategy enables you to gain a comprehensive understanding of the factors influencing your business environment. This empowers you to make informed decisions that drive efficiency, mitigate risks, and capitalize on growth opportunities.
Let’s understand this through an example of the healthcare industry. A hospital may utilize data strategy to enhance patient care and outcomes. By aggregating and analyzing electronic health records, diagnostic images, and real-time monitoring data, healthcare providers can identify patterns and trends in patient health. This enables them to make timely and informed decisions regarding diagnosis, treatment plans, and care management.
- Optimize business operations for automation
The automation wave is here! Over 3 in 10 organizations have already automated at least one function. McKinsey predicts that automation will boost 0.8-1.4% global productivity every year. A data strategy provides the foundation for automation by ensuring the availability of clean, standardized data that can be seamlessly integrated with automated systems.
By establishing robust data governance protocols and investing in data quality management, organizations can ensure that the data powering their automated processes is accurate, reliable, and up-to-date. This not only enhances the effectiveness of automation initiatives but also minimizes the risk of errors and inefficiencies associated with poor data quality.
For example, a manufacturing company may use a data strategy to automate production processes and optimize supply chain operations. By integrating data from sensors, machinery, and inventory systems, the organization can gain real-time visibility into production workflows and inventory levels.
This enables automated decision-making, such as adjusting production schedules based on demand forecasts or triggering reorder notifications when inventory levels fall below a certain threshold. As a result, the company can reduce lead times, minimize waste, and improve overall operational efficiency, ultimately driving cost savings and enhancing competitiveness. In this way, data strategy catalyzes automation, enabling organizations to unlock new levels of efficiency and productivity across their operations.
- Build a secured foundation for trust & compliance
Non-compliance can be a major financial blow. Studies show it can cost organizations over $14 million. A data strategy helps implement robust data governance frameworks, encryption protocols, and access controls. This helps businesses to safeguard sensitive information and mitigate the risk of data breaches.
A data strategy ensures compliance with regulatory requirements, such as GDPR, HIPAA, or PCI-DSS, and establishes processes for data handling, retention, and disclosure. This facilitates trust among customers, partners, and stakeholders and protects the organization from costly fines, legal liabilities, and reputational damage associated with non-compliance.
- Future-proof business with Predictive Analytics
Predictive analytics is a branch of advanced analytics that utilizes historical data, statistical algorithms, and machine learning techniques to forecast future outcomes or trends.
Investing in a data strategy is an investment in your business’s future. It analyzes historical data and industry trends and empowers you to anticipate future scenarios. This, further, enables proactive decision-making and allows you to mitigate potential risks before they arise. Data insights from your strategy highlight areas for optimization. You can streamline processes, allocate resources effectively, and identify cost-saving opportunities.
Build a winning data strategy with Datacrew
At Datacrew, our experts work with you to create a strong plan for handling your company’s information. This plan lines up with what your business wants to achieve. It shows how we’ll organize, look at, control, and use your data to give you a better edge over competitors.
Here’s how we do it: We make sure you can see and get to your data easily. We bring together different data sources and break down barriers between them. This makes it simpler to collect and share information across your company. Plus, we set clear rules and goals for how your data is being managed. Start a conversation today to learn how we can accelerate data success for your organization.