Future readying your business in a data-driven world
We live in a day and age of data ubiquity. Everything around us is capturing data. From your smartwatch to your refrigerator. From your exercise bike to your pet’s collar. In fact, there is so much data collected that Forbes stated that 90% of the world’s data has been created in the past 2 years!
There is a famous saying that data is the new oil. It is the lifeblood of businesses. Yet, despite the abundance of data, most businesses today are not able to leverage the full benefits of the data they collect on a regular basis.
According to a recent study from Forrester, commissioned by Dell Technologies, 71% of businesses are gathering data faster than they can use it, and 66% of businesses say they constantly need more data than their current capabilities provide!
So, you’re constantly collecting data, but you can’t use it because you’re overwhelmed. You then think that you will solve the problem by collecting MORE data, but you don’t know what to do with all this data, because you’re overwhelmed!
This is called the Data Paradox.
Data is extremely important. When leveraged properly, it can be used to drive business decisions, get ahead of the competition, create new revenue streams, better serve your customers, and of course, increase profits.
A good example of a business leveraging data to create new revenue streams would be the Google Nest thermostat. When you control your Nest thermostat with your mobile app, you leave a digital “paper trail.” Google, who acquired Nest in 2014, knows what temperature you like to run your air conditioner at, when you are most likely to turn it on, and when you typically turn it off. They also know when your wife changes the temperature, and you change it back.
This data goes into the Google marketing engine and helps them display relevant ads on your web browser; the ones you are most likely to click on and purchase something. For example, if you like running your air conditioner at a steady, Arctic, 65-degrees Fahrenheit, and your wife (when you’re not looking) bumps it up to 75, the next time a heatwave is in the forecast, you may see ads for iced tea or air conditioner filters. Your wife, on the other hand, may see ads for sweaters and down comforters. Having this insight into your actual behaviors provides Google with the ability to create a new revenue stream for themselves, which far outweighs any profits they could make on sales of Nest thermostats themselves.
By not having access to this kind of critical business intelligence, businesses are leaving a lot on the table. Surprisingly, the study shows that only 13% of companies are taking full advantage of the data at their disposal and have become Data Champions; businesses that have struck the right balance between leveraging the right technology, implementing the right processes with regard to analyzing and storing the data, and having the right skills on hand to actually make use of it all.
So, what is holding back most businesses from being data-ready, and how can we overcome these challenges?
One of the major challenges is data silos, which are very common in today’s modern businesses. Data is collected and stored based on the business need. IoT sensor data is used to manage the equipment or for its own specific function. Customer usage data is used for personalization, and so on. Every category of data is stored in its own silo to be used for its specific purpose. This approach is extremely limiting, and a very 20th century way of doing things.
Consider the following example of a business that did it the right way:
A Singapore-based company that manufactures robot vacuum cleaners deployed Intelligent IoT Messaging technology to enable people to communicate with their vacuum cleaners via an AI-powered chatbot. Within the first 24 hours of deploying this technology, the system recorded numerous exception commands, such as “Quiet!”, as well as many other similar not so polite commands, including some with colorful metaphors sprinkled in for special effect.
Apparently, when the customer would receive a phone call, the vacuum cleaner’s noisy motor would drown out the conversation, and he wouldn’t be able to hear anything over the phone. So, in a state of frustration, the customer would type “be quiet”. Of course, the system would patiently respond with a patronizing “Unknown command. Please reenter.” The person would become even more frustrated and enter a command with much stronger language. The robot, with its patience of a saint, would politely respond, “Unknown command. Please reenter.” You get the picture.
Essentially, the customers wanted a pause feature!
However, here is the thing. No one was reporting this need to the company. In a typical situation, when people get frustrated with technology, they either return it or write bad reviews, without the company ever receiving direct feedback! How tragic is that!
This company; however, within 40 minutes of analyzing the data, was able to actually implement and deliver this “differentiating” feature to their global customer base via the Cloud, while the competition wasn’t even aware that the need existed!
What this company did right was that they broke down data silos by leveraging state of the art technology (i.e., Cloud, Natural Language Processing, and Artificial Intelligence) as well as hiring in-house talent who had the right skills to not only deliver new capabilities to their customers, but also to learn about what their customers want, like, and dislike, and the right processes in place to use that information to improve their development agility and give themselves a competitive edge in the marketplace.
In essence, this company is a data champion.
In conclusion, the statistics show that we still have a long way to go before the majority of businesses are able to fully leverage the power of their collected data. It’s no longer an option to be complacent about underutilizing your data-based assets, as your competition is working very hard to come out on top. To emerge victoriously, we must change our attitude about the way we store and process data, implement the right technology, and hire the right people who can leverage that technology to carry the business forward into the next decade and beyond.
“This post was sponsored by Dell, but the opinions are my own and don’t necessarily represent Dell Technologies’ positions or strategies.”
About the Author
Avrohom Gottheil is the founder of #AskTheCEO Media, where he helps global brands get heard over the noise on social media, by presenting their corporate message using language people understand.
Avrohom presents his clients as Thought Leaders, which challenges his audience to reimagine their own mission and vision, delivering actionable insights, and leaving them passionate, motivated, and with the necessary tools to take immediate action.
Avrohom comes from a 20+ year career in IT and Telecom, where he helped businesses around the world install and maintain their communication systems and contact centers. He is a Top-ranked global expert in IoT, AI, Cloud, and Cybersecurity, followed worldwide on Twitter, and a frequent speaker on leveraging technology to accelerate revenue growth.
Listen to him share the latest technology trends, tools, and best practices for IoT, AI, Cloud, Cybersecurity, and emerging technologies on the #AskTheCEO podcast — voted as the #1 Channel Friendly Podcast in 2019 by Forrester, and #2 Podcast from Thinkers360 Thought Leaders in 2020.
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