5 Ways to Use Data to Make Faster — and Better — Business Decisions Business leaders need to have instant data access and analysis to make rapid decisions, yet getting what they need is often hampered by a lack of access and analysis, siloed teams and overwhelmed IT departments. Here are five ways you can break down siloes and get your employees what they need to collaborate and make business function decisions faster.
By Girish Pancha Edited by Kara McIntyre
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Your marketing team needs to move at the speed of customers. They need to know if their new marketing campaign is working today so they can adjust it tomorrow. Your inventory management team wants supply chain products and supply visibility to quickly shift inventory to locations running low. Your sales team knows time is money and wants to know which accounts need an in-person visit to close the deal or if a sales campaign is more appropriate at this stage in the buyer's journey.
These needs require instant access to data from a multitude of sources. Typically, these departments ask IT for a report. But the sophisticated data analytics of today requires a specialized IT talent that's scarce, and the velocity of data makes those requests a frustration for all. The data is needed immediately and the IT team is unable to respond in real time.
Fortunately, modern technologies, applications and technology-savvy business line staff can provide the instant data access and analysis requirements that in the past fell to IT staff to design and maintain.
Consider these five ways to take the burden off IT while giving business users access to what they need to make good business decisions quickly.
Related: 4 Steps to Become a Data-Driven Business
1. Deploy low-code platforms to keep pace with business needs
A not-so-secret weapon in many IT departments these days is low-code tools for quickly developing and deploying low-level to business-critical applications and components enterprise-wide. Using drag-and-drop tools that seamlessly leverage code that captures bespoke business logic, developers can quickly develop and replicate applications, pipelines and workflows from one business case to another.
As well, IT staff are joining hands with "citizen developers," business staff who want to be involved in improving workflows and enabling data access. IT staff provide these staff with basic training on the IT-approved low-code platforms. Now marketing can create their own transactional data reports on the fly.
It's a win-win. IT staff can quickly deploy needed enterprise applications and deliver analytics-ready data, and business users get what they need to make decisions at the real-time speed of business today.
2. Adopt a digital consumer call center approach for internal IT support issues
Take a cue from consumer-facing companies by using automated self-service "chats" for common IT help desk issues. The employee gets immediate answers to their routine, oft-repeated questions (like "How do I change my email signature?") while their more complex needs automatically get elevated to IT staff.
3. Leverage real-time communication tools to aid enterprise-wide collaboration
Communication tools such as Microsoft Teams, Slack and digital whiteboards went viral during the pandemic as a way for IT to keep remote and hybrid teams agile and flexible while assuring security. There's no longer a need for IT departments to deploy and maintain separate video conferencing, intranet and voice-over-IP telephony platforms.
What's more, these tools are making everyone more productive. In a Forrester Research study commissioned by Microsoft, respondents say their knowledge workers save four hours per week through improved collaboration and information sharing by using Teams.
Related: Why Data Needs to Be at the Center of Your Organization
4. Implement a data integration platform to manage all that data and stay compliant
How quickly you can access data and make smart decisions has a big impact on your ability to compete in this data age, yet data is typically siloed within business units and individual systems. Too many data engineers, if you are fortunate to have them, manually code data pipelines to deliver data needed for analytics and reporting.
These one-to-one data pipelines do not scale or access data from the entire ecosystem to provide a complete picture. Plus, when a line of business needs different or more data, data engineers are tasked with creating new pipelines which lead to more roadblocks getting in the way of smart decisions.
Organizations are turning to data integration platforms to improve the impact of data engineers in providing the complete and accurate data needed to compete. These platforms offer a single interface with drag-and-drop capabilities for creating many different data integration pipelines with the ability to replicate processors used in other data pipelines, even those with custom code.
Another way these platforms should ease the IT burden is by creating resilient data pipelines that can adjust changes in data structure, semantics or architecture to prevent breakages that slow down data delivery and impact the business.
5. Build your own digital transformation talent within your current organization
Just as data integration is the soul of agile business decisions, staff collaboration is the heart. Break down silos between lines of business and your IT staff. Start by training IT staff to understand the lines of business — their goals, needs, functions, roadblocks, processes and people. That understanding will inform how IT prioritizes efforts to deliver what matters most to the business. Better yet, establish mutual line-of-sight goals between the lines of business and IT.
Reward "citizen developers," tech-based collaboration efforts and IT staff who mentor and train others — all those who make your organization smarter, more nimble, productive and rewarding — wherever the innovations come from.
Create a scholarship program to build today the skills you need that just aren't widely available in the market. Consider subsidizing advanced degrees or certification programs for top IT staff in high-demand areas like cybersecurity and data engineering. You can set up these scholarships with a contractual agreement to stay.
Related: 3 Ways to Utilize Data to Boost Your Bottom Line
There are countless ways you can smart-size your current IT team and empower your business users by giving them technology tools that excite them and allow them to focus on what they do best — while giving them the insights they need to make decisions at today's pace of business.
There's no end in sight for IT staffing shortages, yet digital transformation is still very much on the C-suite agenda. You can close the talent gap by using technologies and tools that improve collaboration, automation and data integration. And you can smart-size your current IT team and business teams by giving them technology tools that excite them and pathways to modern careers that will change them and change your business.
