Every day, large enterprises invest substantially in valuable data. However, few are getting enough out of it. In fact, in a global survey, 60% of business and IT leaders reported that at least half of the data in their organisation is “dark” or unused.
This isn’t a surprise; the amount of data available to companies is growing more quickly than organisations can adapt. In a recent survey of C-level executives at some of the world’s leading companies, 90.9% of respondents identified people and processes as the biggest barriers to becoming data-driven.
Thus, building a data-driven culture is essential to illuminating dark data. Here are some concrete actions you can take to bring your organisation’s data into the light.
1. Increase accessibility
Far too often, in large enterprises, the task of finding and transforming data into actionable insights has been the responsibility of the market insights team. Their job is to provide stakeholders across the organisation with intelligent data that can then be used to build more informed campaigns and business cases.
In recent years, however, the explosion of data paired with the rise of increasingly diverse, global teams has made it difficult for marketing insights teams to keep up.
Rather than placing the responsibility of diffusing insights with one team, increase accessibility to market intelligence for everyone in the organisation. Adopting a cloud-based technology makes it easier for all employees to access market intelligence, no matter where they are. Ensuring that everyone can share, collaborate, and learn will help to diffuse data across the organisation.
2. Streamline your work with AI
It’s time to let AI take over admin tasks. Technology has become advanced enough that your team shouldn’t have to waste their time making sure that your wealth of data is organised. Choose a cloud-based solution that can support your initiative to illuminate dark data by:
- Using algorithms built and trained for smart search to find data faster
- Identifying duplicate and old reports to ensure that your market intelligence is current
- Automating the classification of information to remove the need for inconvenient manual uploads.
Cut down on the time spent on data admin to reduce the barriers between your organisation and a data-driven culture.
3. Make room for inspiration
By minimising such obstacles, you make room for your employees to feel inspired and motivated.
Services like Spotify and Netflix that cater to consumer needs have raised the bar for user experience. With tailored content recommendations, intuitive design, and instant access, they have transformed expectations for what software should deliver. Workplace tools are no exception.
Your team deserves technology that is inspiring and fun to use. Provide them with tools they actually enjoy using so that building a data-driven culture isn’t just a “have-to” but a “want-to”.
To build a data-driven culture, put your people first.
Our three suggestions above all come down to the same foundation: putting your people first. Choose technology that is designed for the employees using it. Make sure that it removes real obstacles, like lack of accessibility and excessive administration. And make sure that it is built to inspire.
Building a data-driven culture is essential to illuminating your dark data. With strategy and technology that put your people first, you can overcome the common challenges that large enterprises face when trying to implement data-driven initiatives and reduce the amount of data going unused.
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