Unlock the magic of your data

Unstructured data – unlock additional value 

A couple of weeks into my new role at Dufrain, I had the privilege of attending the Pigsty to Piggybank events in partnership with Scottish Financial Enterprise . 

Reading up on all things data is one thing, but hearing key insights from leaders in this space opens your mind to the great opportunities organising your data can do for your business.  Not just from a compliance point of view, but what excited me is the potential to dig into a hugely untapped resource and turn insights into customer and employee magic. Imagine the benefits you could bring to your teams and customers when you TRULY have built amazing relationships.  

The aim of many leaders is to disrupt the industry, challenge and gain competitive advantage and to do that the answer may be sitting right in front of you. Tackle your unstructured data.  

There are so many areas that supports a data strategy, Dufrain have taken Unstructured data as an initial topic with more to come. 

Here are my three personal takeaways from the breakfast session discussions  

It’s all data to me 

Structured data, unstructured data. It was all data to me, but it became clear quickly that most of the data I think about is structured, which by 2025 will only account for around 20% in your business. That’s a whole lot of data that is MIA and your business doesn’t know what story that data could tell. Anyone remember the lego data picture circulating Linkedin last year…that could be a reality if you take the steps to discover and organise data.  

Unstructured data just to give a couple of examples could be PDFs, Social Media, video, word or excel docs. Thinking about my morning, I’ve created quite a bit of unstructured data, so the headache for the data team begins.  

Data first approach 

Where do you start when you try to align the business, break down silos, analyse trends, develop more efficient processes? DATA. That term single source of the truth that is the dream for many businesses needs many things feeding into it to create that view. At its core you need the right data, otherwise you may be getting different versions of the truth… and then its not really the truth is it? 

For me, it’s about getting the input and foundations right then the rest will follow…  

Bottom-up vs top down 

Digital transformation and driving efficiency, reducing risk, reducing costs, gaining meaningful customer insights and driving innovation is always championed from the leaders of the business as part of the roadmap for success and rightly so. But a lot of the time to get programmes and projects moving and aggressive timelines met quickly, only the core aspects of data transformation are achieved, boxes are ticked, and the wider transformation strategy misses key areas making the wider strategic piece open to failure or open to taking much longer.

Whether its user adoption, change management, data strategies, there needs to be a mix of everyone working together for the common goal. And you can get started just by working with your data leaders and asking the question – who in the business is working with all the teams and departments to identify the unstructured data.  

Further insights 

If you’d like any further insights including how unstructured data isn’t as hard to get to grips with as you might think, connect with some of the speakers at the event – Joanna Carberry who shares her insights regularly and I have it on good authority that Dufrain's CCO Gerry Goodwin may write a few more hints and tips on unstructured data soon so connect with him to read it first.