Finding Opportunity in Business Data Means Planning Ahead

Recognizing a major opportunity can have a monumental impact on a business. In many cases, knowing when to seize momentum can even make or break one.

Just look at the iPod. The original idea for the iPod was first pitched to RealNetworks by its then-employee, Tony Fadell. After his proposal for a sleeker MP3 Player was rejected, he resigned and pitched the idea to Apple CEO, Steve Jobs. Just two months after its roll-out in 2001, Apple had sold nearly 125,000 devices – arguably transforming both the music industry and Apple's business. Jobs is often hailed as the driving force behind Apple's innovation and success, but a more important – and ultimately more impactful – skill that Jobs possessed was his ability to identify the next big thing.

Not every decision will change the fortune of a company as the iPod did, but every single one will either positively or negatively impact a business outcome. It is therefore unsurprising that the recent explosion in big data has resulted in massive investments in data analytics and business intelligence software – a trend that has continued through the accelerated adoption of machine learning and artificial intelligence. Instead of looking for their own Steve Jobs, many organizations are buying up software that will help them make more informed decisions, every time.

Using data to make great decisions

If you listen to some BI consultants and vendors, it can seem like all you have to do is buy the right solution and start holding onto every kilobyte to get ahead. However, adopting ever-more sophisticated software and amassing more and more data isn't always a direct path to market insights. While this path can result in wisdom, many organizations are still struggling to convert BI investment into tangible business outcomes. The data, on its own, is not translating into better decision-making – and this is where the great divide in business value creation lies. New research from Qlik, in partnership with IDC, revealed that organizations with data pipelines that support the best decision-making capabilities are experiencing the greatest improvements in business value, achieving over two-times more than those with the worst decision-making capabilities (38% vs. 15%, respectively).

While many organizations continue to invest in new solutions that promise to harness the full value of their data, what many often do not realize is that there is only so much data analytics can do. There is a finite value that can be achieved from data – if you're not putting enough or the right data into your data pipeline, you are significantly limiting the outcomes you can achieve from it.

The challenge of identifying valuable data

Introducing more valuable data into their data pipeline is something that nearly all businesses struggle to get right, with 96% of global business leaders reporting that identifying new data sources is challenging for their organization. This is consistent across regions – only companies in Japan and Germany reported a lower rate (89% respectively) – and every industry.

Business leaders report facing both technical issues of having the resources to search for and investing in the technology to create valuable data, and challenges in understanding its validity and assessing the potential ROI. It is therefore little surprise that when asked which area of their data pipeline would receive the greatest investment over the coming 12 months, one quarter of business leaders (25%) reported focusing on identifying new data sources.

Data catalogs for better data discovery

One way to support individuals in identifying valuable data that can be used to inform decision-making is to use a data catalog. Data cataloging establishes a single repository of all the data a business has available for analytics; so that anyone – from data engineers to business users – can identify and access it. Functioning as a formal organizational system that curates and manages all incoming data, data catalogs make discovery and governance more accessible. Recent advances in artificial intelligence also automate assembly and population of new data catalogs ensuring that legacy data can also be made available for quality, lineage, and analysis.

An important consideration when investing in a data catalog is to ensure its accessibility for non-technical users. Functionalities like keyword search, visualizations, and chat capabilities that allow users to find, export, and share potentially-relevant data sets can all help distributed teams find valuable information. Of course, this cannot come at the cost of privacy and should be balanced against a common framework of security, governance, and metadata capabilities that protect data, manage access privileges, and track user activity.

Put more in to get more out

Without the right information, it's tough to spot trends, identify new opportunities and – most of all – be confident that you're making the right decision in going for them. This means many companies will find themselves either missing out or placing wild bets and relying on potluck.

It's time that organizations recognize the benefits of investing in data from the beginning, building out their data pipelines, and promoting business-wide data discovery with data catalogs. Because when it comes to finding insights in data, what you get depends entirely on what you put in.

Author

Joe DosSantos, Chief Data Officer, Qlik

Joe is responsible for the alignment of business and technology to deploy the 3rd generation of business intelligence at Qlik to enable meaningful data and analytics insights across the business. He is responsible for use case prioritization, DataOps methodology and the deployment of information management systems, including all of Qlik's data integration and data analytics products. He also provides thought leadership in modern data architecture, data governance and data literacy, and serves as an evangelist at major conferences and events.