the data challenge – overcoming challenges and creating opportunities: AN INTERVIEW WITH helen ward, data3

Data is becoming an increasingly integral part of business, yet those using it to their advantage remains too small. Helen at Data3 (data-cubed.co.uk) an award-winning global data consultancy with an Isle of Man presence, educates and assists with data consultancy to help companies make money while saving them time and resources. She shares her insights into the challenges and opportunities in data today.

In your experience, what are the common priorities in business today?

There are normally only two levers you can pull John – to make more money or to cut costs. Sitting beneath this is complexity because every business is different, but at simple level you either make more money or save cost. I think most people would agree with me saying that both have become harder whatever industry, sector or location you’re in especially in the current climate. So you have to start with a plan of how you can use your data to overcome these challenges.

What is the main challenge for businesses and their data?

I would say there is one real and one perceived challenge. The real being that data is often confidential, sometimes highly personal/private and sometimes commercially sensitive – it needs to be treated with care. It needs to be secure and stored in a robust, encrypted location. This can feel scary to businesses. And the perceived challenge is that GDPR scares the life out of many business owners and leaders. Rightly so, as you can get big fines. But GDPR doesn’t stop businesses using their data for good, such as improving customer service or deriving more insight. These challenges can be overcome with a robust, secure and planned approach.

How can businesses use data to their advantage?

There are two main ways to using data to your advantage. Firstly, data can be used to track your performance so you make smarter, quicker decisions resulting in your business making more money or saving money. And secondly, data can also help monetise new revenue streams by creating brand-new products for both existing and potential customers. We need to know what is happening now and in the past, so we have a chance of making smarter and quicker decisions in the future. The days when people made gut-feel or whoever shouted loudest should be over!

What is the most common business objective and how can data used to achieve it?

The most common objective is to make more money. One idea to help businesses achieve this is to combine data on customers with financial data. Because by looking at customer data on its own, you will know who your customers are and their buying habits. By looking at financial data on its own, you will know your sales, costs and profit levels. But by combining them together, you can understand who your most profitable customers are, their lifetime value, how much it cost you to acquire them. And how the cost to acquire a customer compared to the average lifetime value of a customer? So, is it worth acquiring them?

Just this one example of combining customer data with financial data, can inform strategic decisions across all parts of a business. From a product or service perspective, you can focus on the products that are popular with your most profitable customers and the ones who generate the highest lifetime value. From a marketing perspective, you can target your communications and promotions at your most profitable customers. From a customer service perspective, you could offer new loyalty schemes or customer discounts to your most profitable customers. From an engagement perspective, you could invite your most profitable customers to provide feedback and ideas. From a call centre perspective, you could prioritise your most profitable customers. And so on.

Businesses we’ve worked with, who have done these types of things, have increased their profit by > 10% and/or see ROIs of > 5 times the investment into data. So, it can make a massive impact.

What are the main concerns on using data to achieve such objectives?

Sometimes data can be low quality, incomplete and inconsistent. This is the norm, rather than the exception. Most businesses believe their data is the worst they have ever seen, but it’s normal! Some data gaps may need enrichment through external data, data processing or manual data entry which can be time-consuming and costly. But the sooner it is sorted, the better as otherwise the problem will grow along with the data.

What is the impact on culture with such changes?

The tech is just the start – it is the usage of the tech that makes the difference. You can have the best tech in the world but if your team have not bought in, or is not trained to use it, or don’t see the benefits… it’ll never work. Think of the tech launch as the start of the project, not the end… culture and behavioural change takes years to accomplish so build in the time and effort to support this change through training, for one.

Where is a good place to start?

Start with a plan of course! Otherwise known as your data strategy, it is the same as any other plan and everyone knows “if you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never get there”. Work out where you are today through a data audit, focus on what your business wants to achieve and what your business priorities are and then work out a plan to achieve your business goals using data.

Without a data strategy you risk wasting time, effort or resources on a set of pretty pictures or a bunch of tech… without having any positive business impacts.

What challenges do you see for business in the next 12 months?

Budgets will be tight for most businesses in most industries, even those partially impacted by COVID. So cutting cost will be key. The challenge will be balancing the need for short term investment in automation and digitisation with the mid-long term benefit of saving money, time and effort from manual tasks. Spend money now to save money later... versus cutting all costs and hoping for the best. It’s a tough call. But best to invest now to support a sustainable future.

What opportunities do you see for business in the next 12 months?

Digital transformation has been fast-tracked due to COVID – and underpinning digital transformation is data. Our data projects have been with the early adopters…data hasn’t gone mainstream yet. But now more than ever businesses will want to know what is and isn’t working and how they can improve and make decisions quickly and data is the answer to these questions. So it seems we should expect to see a surge in data projects in line with digital transformation projects.

Helen, thank you for sharing these thoughts with me and really interesting to learn about how important ‘’big data’ really is.

If you feel like your business could benefit from more information on how to make better use of your data or want help implementing these principles into your strategy, visit data-cubed.co.uk, email helen.ward@data-cubed.co.uk or call 07624 491385 to arrange a free consultation.