Data is your greatest asset. Data is profit. Data is the new oil.

You’ve heard the snappy sound bites but you still don’t know where to begin.

Right now, the most successful companies are leveraging data to inform decision-making, reduce costs and gain a competitive edge. And by building that data-driven culture in their organization, they are laying the foundation for the introduction of machine learning and AI tools. They are ready to avail of the next generation technologies that are altering the corporate landscape.

But how do you make this a reality for your business?

You need a data strategy to ensure the quality, security, governance and utilization of data across your organization.

Get great data

Next, you must ensure you are collecting data that is reliable and relevant. With the huge amount of data that we now generate, it is important that the information you need does not get lost in a data silo or hidden in the noise of excessive data.

Then comes the challenge of quality assurance. High quality data is essential in order to make technologies like machine learning effective for your business. Many businesses work hard to ensure there are no discrepancies in their data so that it is consistent and reliable. This allows them to reap the full benefits from analytics and reporting. Something as trivial as inconsistent spelling can impact marketing campaigns and customer experience. Or data inaccuracies in highly regulated industries like life sciences can result in a lack of transparency in the supply chain and delayed decision making.

If your goal is to create a data-driven business, you must work hard to remove ambiguous, biased and duplicate data for better business insights downstream. Data pipelines must be regularly maintained and updated, automating where possible to reduce the introduction of error.

Good governance

A robust data governance framework forms a vital part of any data strategy. It looks at the overall approach to collecting, managing, securing and storing data in the organization. It defines roles, responsibilities and processes for ensuring accountability for and ownership of data across your business. Good data governance needs teamwork and investment but it ensures better compliance with data regulations, better risk management and improved trust in data reliability. But there are challenges too – governance structures must be monitored to avoid data becoming overly siloed or overly restricted.

A culture of success

The ultimate aim of a data-driven work culture is to have everyone in your organization working from the same real time, integrated data, armed with a holistic up to date view of the business and vital predictive insights. This means your workers are empowered to make value-driven decisions that consider the interests of your entire organization and it ensures that your business is agile in the face of certain change.