Using Data and Technology to Drive Strategic Decisions

If you’re running a modern business, then taking advantage of the latest technological tools can give you a massive competitive advantage. The pace of technological change means that advances are being rolled out more or less constantly – and being aware of them is often critical.

Among the more salient trends is our reliance on data. It’s now possible to collect masses of actionable data points and to analyse them in order to make better decisions. But exactly how does this work, and how can we do it well?

Establishing a Data-Driven Culture

The best business leaders are able to act decisively on gut instinct. This is a way of leveraging innumerable data points, which come from the experience and know-how of the person making the decision. However, this approach is prone to bias, and it fails to take advantage of the large amounts of data that we can now collect.

Sometimes, the facts can contradict our gut impressions – and it’s worth knowing this before moving forward. This principle is at the heart of the government’s National Data Strategy, which aims for the UK to become a ‘world-leading’ data economy.

Of course, making this transition might require specialised expertise. This is where it’s worth adopting managed cloud services that provide scalable data platforms.

Leveraging the Right Technology Stack for Insight

Gleaning insight from your data means having access to the right tools and leveraging them in the right way. This might mean using cloud platforms to store and access the data, as well as analytics dashboards to present that data in the right way. AI and machine-learning models represent the cutting edge when it comes to leveraging the data.

In recent times, there’s been a marked trend toward cloud adoption, and even multi-cloud strategies, wherein two or more different cloud services are used to meet different needs.

Again, picking out the right managed service will help to ensure that the needs of your business are met.

From Data to Decision: Turning Insights into Action

Of course, amassing data is one thing. Turning that data into intelligence that can be acted upon means picking out certain metrics and statistics. For example, if you have data in the form of thousands of website visits, then you might seek to establish certain figures, like the average length of a visit, and the standard deviation. Plotting this information on a graph might allow you to more easily spot trends, and act upon them.

This is what is called an insight loop, and, as the name might suggest, it’s a continuous process of data collection, analysis, insight, and action.

Governance, Compliance & Future-Proofing Your Strategy

The more data you’re using, the more you’ll need to be aware of how you’re keeping it under control. This is what will keep you on the right side of key regulations, like the Data Protection Act 2018. Concerns about cloud competition are persuading many UK firms to switch to hybrid and multi-cloud systems. Getting on the right side of the rules often means being proactive about it!