Another year is quickly coming to a close. Unfortunately, 2021 did not turn out to be the year of “putting the pandemic behind us” that we hoped for. Despite that, we hope you saw this year as a turning point and are starting to see a trend toward better times ahead.
As you look to make your organization stronger in a post-COVID 19 world, your organization’s data can be a key factor for moving forward and getting ahead. Here are a few questions to ask to ensure your organization is getting the biggest competitive advantage possible from its data resources.
Siloed data prevents a wholistic view
Each of our organization’s line-of-business systems keeps its own data repository. While reporting and analytics may work well within any given business system, these individual silos of data make it difficult to examine the entire enterprise.
Ask yourself: Does my data allow for a wholistic view of the entire organization?
Siloed data needs to be brought together in a central repository to provide that wholistic view.
Building a central data repository is no trivial task. Experienced help is key to ensuring:
- data is consolidated in an efficient, scalable manner
- data is properly cleansed for accuracy and consistency
- a ROI achieved in the shortest time possible.
Critical data in spreadsheets and personal documents puts you at risk
Many organizations, both large and small, end up with crucial information maintained in spreadsheets and other types of documents, oftentimes located on personal devices. This makes it easy for the keeper of that data to perform updates, but it creates operational and security headaches.
Ask yourself: Do critical pieces of my enterprise data reside in personal repositories?
Key data that resides in personal documents exposes your organization to security risks, reporting headaches, along with backup and recovery issues.
Microsoft provides tools such as tools such as Power Apps and Power Automate to economically create data-oriented applications. These custom data applications can be implemented to maintain critical enterprise information in a structured environment. This leads to:
- better security around this data
- better understanding and better documentation of this data and the processes surrounding it
- better availability of this data to enterprise reporting and analytics environments.
Key Performance Indicators without action provide no value
Organizations define Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to efficiently monitor operational health. However, to be a truly effective tool, KPIs should trigger a corrective response when they stray outside of the expected range.
Ask yourself: How does the organization respond when my data generates a KPI value outside of the expected range?
If a particular measure is truly key to the organization, its deviation for the normal range should trigger a response within the organization. If that is not the case, then the measure is not actually key to the organization’s health. KPIs that do not trigger a response simply clutter up dashboards and management reports without bringing real value in the form of data-based decision making.
IT reporting backlog cripples a data driven culture
Every organization has more requests for reports and analytics than there are IT Department members to fulfill those reports. This throttles data-based decision making and leads to frustration within the organization.
Ask yourself: Is our IT reporting and analytics backlog causing my data to be unreachable and creating exasperation with the organization?
Self-service reporting and analysis can help alleviate the IT backlog and jumpstart a culture centered on data-driven decision making. Self-service analytics does not mean throwing the gates wide open and encouraging a proliferation of conflicting and often inaccurate or incomplete reports. Using today’s self-service analytics tools, organizations can maintain a curated data repository containing clean, consistent, enterprise-wide data, while providing business users the freedom to explore and analyze that data.
SCS can help you to the right answers
The expert consultants at SCS can partner with your organization to create the applications and analytics systems that help ensure a more successful 2022. Contact us today to start planning for the coming year.
