Data has long been touted as the catalyst for successful customer intimacy. Yet, in many organisations, it is still derived from a poorly cobbled together web of disparate systems and equally disparate data sources.
According to TechSoft Internal, the local partner of TIBCO Software, the foundation upon which data is built is more important than the data itself.
In a recent survey by MIT Technology Review Insights, senior executives responding highlighted that their highest priority and most significant investment in their business in 2019 was developing a robust data architecture. This featured well above the digitalisation of products and services, internal processes and the movement to the cloud.
While respondents cited that 2020 would see a shift in priorities towards data analytics, AI, IoT and cybersecurity as a component of their data architecture foundation, the ensuing business disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has seen a shift in course and urgency for these technologies.
"With the sudden and radical shift in the way users and customers engage with a business, created by the pandemic, there has been a startling reality in terms of data. Those organisations with existing data architectures and tools to derive insights from their data, have been able to mobilise their businesses better and create better business resiliency," states Clinton Scott, managing director at TechSoft International.
“If data is the core catalyst for building better business use cases. Then it is also the best tool to use to analyse the different behaviour of customers and even employees when suddenly found in a state of business disaster. The sudden and instant push to digital and cloud-first, as businesses have raced to embrace a remote world, is also the greatest resource for data collection and aggregation.”
According to Scott, the sudden reams of digital data at the disposal of enterprises is the perfect tool for businesses to leverage as they strive to deliver better products and solutions that meet a customer's need. Prior to the pandemic businesses still had one foot in digital and one still firmly entrenched on-site. Those with a digital business plan, supported by a robust data architecture, have been able to rapidly deploy new customer experiences derived from the sudden surge in data.
In the US and the UK, retailers are using the data patterns from online buying to determine which stores they should and shouldn’t open. They have also been able to glean insights from this data to drive actionable changes to business planning and even stock purchasing. Locally, Scott says retailers in South Africa are being given access to data from landlords and suppliers which they never had access to prior to Covid-19.
“It seems that in the midst of this crisis businesses are prepared to share data more freely, allowing them all to make more informed decisions around addressing risk, closing stores, opening stores, stocking stores, and the impact to supply chains. This speaks to the fact that, data is a transformative energy to those businesses willing to listen to their data. We are in a world where the true potential of data is right in front of us, and we can use it to drive customer intimacy, operational excellence and commandeer business reinvention. At the heart of all of this is the underlying data architecture you have in place, irrespective of the business systems you deploy, it is the fabric that brings these data sources together and enables you to access your data,” states Scott.
“We were all pinning the data explosion on IoT and 5G, and that explosion is still waiting for us, but as customers have moved to a world of clicks as opposed to mortar, the true value of data needs to be harnessed today.”
Locally we have a lot to learn from how we can use the current deluge of data, and Scott urges businesses who don't have proper control or access to their data, to move on how they can build better data architectures quickly. A robust data architecture supports capability, as opposed to just intention, data science as opposed to only data analysis.
“The modern business in this current Covid era, and those that will survive the post-Covid era, are those that build enterprise data strategies that influence and determine the business value chain. They are analysing their data not just to determine future strategies for three months, but for tomorrow. Businesses need to act at the speed of life, and your data can help you determine exactly what that means, however you have to deploy a seamless data architecture to hold this all together. Otherwise, your data will produce nothing but white noise," ends Scott.
