Of Course Your Data is Important. But Are You Seeing Value?

What makes your data valuable? What are the obstacles preventing rapid time-to-value? How do you truly achieve rapid value from Business Intelligence (BI) and Analytics? If you have found yourself asking these questions about your organization’s data, you are not alone. A recent Economist Intelligence Unit survey revealed that 43 percent of senior executives believe data is “extremely important” to strategic decision making and companies that utilize data effectively were three times as likely to outperform their competitors. But despite this urgent need for data, many companies struggle to realize how to wrangle this data and realize the importance of rapid time-to-value.

It’s important to first understand what “valuable data” looks like. Usable data:  

1. Delivers actionable information
2. Provides a single view of integrated data
3. Facilitates efficient and productivity
4. Offers speed
5. Creates autonomy
6. Allows real-time collaboration
7. Incorporates modern governance
8. Scales effectively
9. Provides mobility

While it’s great to understand what your most valuable data should look like, understanding the importance of making this data valuable as quickly as possible is the next road block.

What obstacles are preventing rapid time-to-value with your data?

1. Lack of capacity
2. An outdated approach
3. Waiting for data to be “perfect”
4. Inability to access all relevant data
5. Prioritization issues
6. Lack of leadership buy-in

After all of this is said and done, you still need answers to these limitations and road blocks. Managing your organization’s BI is a balancing act. The more data you are collecting and utilizing and the more users requiring the system, the more complex the environment becomes. Because BI projects are evolutionary by nature, an agile, managed service approach yields better results, faster. An agile managed service approach takes the principles of agile development and marries them with managed services to ensure BI projects move quickly and deliver anticipated value.

Managed services build a bridge between business and IT. This collaboration throughout the project allows for ongoing feedback, input or change. Working together to define and refine priorities will improve the process and drive overall results.

As for achieving rapid value from BI and Analytics, partnering with a third party that can facilitate the project and remove the burden from the existing IT team, is key to this process.  

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