ISME April 2018

Cloud & Big Data
decision making. It is also
extending to people who
have little or no training at all
in data use and interpretation.
The way data works is it
comes in various formats
and is then stored across
many complex systems that
are spread across different
departments. Many firms and
organisations are data driven
but simply being data driven
has not made any change in
their business. The reason
why being data driven has not
helped business is because
raw data has limited value
without the required context.
Raw data that does not have
context do not provide the
employees with the needed
information or background to
get an understanding of the
same.
Questions like what is it,
where did it happen, what
use it has are not answered
by raw data. It is important
that entrepreneurs do not
only provide employees with
raw data but also process it
for analysis to help them to
leverage the data to its full
potential.
What should
Entrepreneurs do with
Raw Data?
The difference between
raw data and data with
context is that one is not
easily understood while the
other provides information.
Information is nothing
but a collection of data
that answers the ‘who,
what, where’ questions.
Entrepreneurs must take raw
data and process, aggregate
and organise them into more
human friendly formats that
allows for data visualization
etc.
Data that is contextualised
helps in transforming data
into information that can be
used as an actionable insight
to make business decisions.
An entrepreneur who wants
to use data of an organisation
the correct way must provide
the decision makers of the
company with information for
analysis rather than raw data.
Data with Context
Leads to Actionable
Insights
What makes a data-driven
company successful? The
ability to maximise the
actionable insights that
are received from the data
collected.
It is only when an organisation
has data with context that it
can have valuable insights
that can help a business to
answer important questions.
But for a data-driven success
an entrepreneur needs to
draw conclusions from data
that allow them to influence
decisions and bring in
change. It is not enough to
have insights that can answer
a question. It is natural that
all insights that are driven
from data will not necessarily
be actionable. It is important
for an organisation to be
able to detect relevant and
personalized information to the
right person and use company
data to make success driven
decisions.
Every company is datadriven.
There is no other way
to be in the present business
world. But not all data driven
business has the same amount
of success that some others
have. The reason behind this
is many entrepreneurs assume
that creating and generating
data is all that is needed to
be data-driven. But collecting
data in itself do not drive the
success of a company. The
collected data must be put to
use. It must be processed from
raw data and presented to the
employees who would then
work on the actionable insights
and make data the basis on
which the success of decision
making rests. There is more
to being data-driven than just
collecting data. Entrepreneurs
who want to succeed as a
data-driven company must add
context to their data and base
their decisions on the insights
received.
SPI thinktank
initiative
Intelligent SME | April 2018
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