As the world somehow adapts to the 2nd wave of the pandemic, the COVID-19 crisis has triggered very strong momentum for digital transformation in businesses. According to research firm Gartner in its latest 2021 Gartner Board of Directors Survey, 69% of corporate executives now want to accelerate their transition. Overall, it’s even about changing the business model of their business through digital. But while everyone agrees that the future will be different, companies need to adapt their approach to data in order to survive the changes now and in the future.
But one question is still too often seen as an obstacle in this transition: why then does the data remain confined within the IT department? Too often today, we still see a huge gap between the potential of Big Data analytics and the actual use that is made of it in business. But as the entire world economy finds itself in turmoil and consumer habits turned upside down, it is no longer a question of looking back or accepting the status quo. It is time for business managers to realize the urgency of the situation if they do not want to risk disappearing.
1. Desperately contained data.
- To succeed in its digital transition under current conditions, the company has no choice: it must become data-driven, that is to say put data at the center of the organization’s culture at all levels. . The key is access to and use of data at will to make more fair and efficient decisions, as well as the possibility of exploring the data autonomously, regardless of its volume, nature and complexity. Unfortunately, to date, few companies have been able to take advantage of data-driven business gains. According to a study by NewVantage from 2020, they would only be 37.8% to have succeeded. In question, the difficulty of the professions to adopt Big Data.
- Too often still, machine learning algorithms do not develop and remain confined within the IT department. The problem is so widespread that the stake for the company is no longer to recruit a data engineer capable of creating the best algorithm, but to choose the one who will be able to put it into production so that the businesses can use it. use.
- IT functions must allow business departments to use the data, but this is a shared responsibility: business managers must also be aware of the many possibilities that exist today. It is no longer conceivable to work through dashboards that take more than 30 minutes to appear. And this is unfortunately still the sad reality of many companies, where this waiting time is taken for granted. It is also no longer possible to miss this essential subject of access to data as a lever of value.
2. ROI and adaptation: the 2 emergencies of functional departments
- What is the stake for the businesses behind the use of data? To be able to obtain an ROI as quickly as possible, especially in the midst of a re-containment period. As Business Intelligence has been used in business for over 20 years, it is time to unleash its full potential. The ROI today on Big Data is easy to achieve and above all very fast: tools exist to accelerate the return on investment from 12 to 1 month by allowing agile exploitation on masses of data. The results are incredible and invaluable to the business.
- This is not a luxury to afford but a necessity to understand, in real time, the expectations and consumption habits of customers and prospects. For example, it is now possible to analyze the evolution of customer behavior over the last 6 months and compare them with the last 10 years, or to verify the variations in the purchasing behavior of its customers during the period of confinement.
- This speed and finesse of understanding are essential to allow the indicators defined by the business departments to be up to date. The company must be able to understand what is going on with its products and with its consumers, not only to acquire new customers, but also to retain existing customers. It is by increasing the scope of its analyzes, as well as the volume of data processed, that businesses will be able to multiply indicators and dashboards in order to survive.
3. Use cases with already visible success.
- The good news is, this is not science fiction. BI on Big Data is not only a reality but also a necessary step for companies, with many use cases existing. Biotopia, for example, wanted to refine its customer behavior analysis capabilities by collecting more data related to receipts, while accelerating the results with the business lines. By increasing the volume of data analyzed and the very granularity of the analyzes, Biotopia has initiated a very rich new offer for analyzing the behavior of organic consumers with retailers.
Source: Economie matin, Emmanuel Dubois
Language: French
