For businesses of all sizes, data represents a massive opportunity but one that is often buried underneath a mountain of marketing jargon. On the one hand, data has never been more ubiquitous and critical to the operations and strategy of businesses, but on the other this phenomenon is so little understood that we are in danger of witnessing a two-speed economy emerging with data-savvy businesses in the fast lane, and everyone else falling progressively further behind.

This situation is compounded by some high-profile instances where data insights have been used in ways that might be described as “less than completely transparent and ethical”: this further cements some misconceptions that data science, engineering and analytics are not disciplines for everyone but are the preserve of either enormous mega-corporations or political movements that don’t care about individual privacy or agency.

And yet, this need not be the case: any business can grow its expertise with its data – after all, they are the people that know it best. All that is really required is a commitment to nurture it, grow its value and quality, introduce it to new data sources and eventually to exploit it better. By viewing data as part of your organisation’s infrastructure rather than purely as a resource to be exploited, you can build your own capacity to make better decisions, bring new services to market, improve efficiency, identify anomalies and just generally do better business. 

Many organisations process a lot of data, but don’t think of themselves as a data organisation. They are better at data than they think, but find it difficult to identify the next steps in improving their data maturity (and the potential benefits it can provide) because they are too close to what they are doing to see the big picture. Sound familiar? If you want to know more about how we can help you get comfortable with your data, you can read about how we helped one firm here or get in touch with us here.