“Knowledge is power” - Francis Bacon
The more you know the easier it is to make plans and decisions that are going to result in success.
Gardening is an excellent example of this, knowing the ph of the ground can impact whether a plant is likely to grow there or not.
The ph of the ground is a data point that will impact the choice of plant. A gardener can have a nice garden without this information but their neighbour who does know it will have a flourishing garden to envy.
Businesses today are full of data points that can provide key decision-makers with vital knowledge to help their businesses flourish. But data can often be found free-flowing through businesses becoming unwieldy and messy.
And like the gardener with a nice garden, a business can survive without doing anything with this data, but think how much better the business could become if you could turn that unwieldy data into helpful data points providing vital knowledge. In fact, businesses that are data-driven are growing at an average of more than 30%. Accenture Insights
Unfortunately, it's not enough just to have data, to make it useful you need to be able to manage, analyse and make it accessible. Focussing the business by putting a data strategy in place will enable you to make the shift from just having data to using it effectively to deliver impact.
However, like a lot of business owners, this probably isn’t your area of expertise and it can be hard to know where to start. It’s tempting just to buy the latest technology or platform with the promise of it being able to deliver everything.
But be warned, if you don’t spend the time upfront planning how you want to use data, it’s highly likely that the platform, once it has been implemented, will fall short of what you need.
@MoJo we believe that developing a data strategy should be led by the business as you will be the ones using it. You might not realise it, but you will be using data every day to make decisions, you may be talking about different products or services and that’s all data. A data strategy will look at ways to use this data, for example how products are sold together or who is buying different products, to provide you with the knowledge to help enhance your decision-making.
We have developed a five-step framework to work with key stakeholders across the business to develop a data strategy:
Identify Business Strategy Goals
Create a Data Use Vision to support the goals (what vital knowledge do you want, how do you want to use the data, statement of intent of use across the business & set success measures)
Identify Current State (Use of data, current capabilities, skills, and data availability)
Develop Jobs to be Actioned (Strategic Data Initiatives and how they support the business strategy/goals and Data use vision)
Create a Prioritised Crawl, Walk, Run Plan (this plan is aligned to the data vision)
Our experience in developing data strategies will guarantee that you will have an actionable plan that will enable you to start using data to deliver against your business goals successfully.
So, if you currently have the business equivalent of a ‘nice’ garden, but want to fully understand its ‘ph’ so that it can really flourish and potentially achieve an extra 30% growth year on year, please get in touch we would love to help you on your journey.