Saurabh Gupta, the Co-founder of CODEX, enables creation of data-driven organizations by facilitating cultural transformation, data advisory offerings, data literacy programs, and data democratization strategy.
The phrases Data-driven Decision Making, and Data-driven Culture have been the buzz for some time now. Big Data, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, Analytics are some of the technologies that are considered as the game changers for the end user industries like manufacturing, retail, telecom, healthcare, banking, media & entertainment, among others.
Decision making based on traditional intelligence, assumptions and predictions is surely giving way to data-driven decision making. This new approach is based on hard facts that are solidly substantiated by the data. Within a few years, every organization must shift to this paradigm to survive. With this digital transformation, organizations across the industries can no longer survive against their competitors who will be equipped with these technologies.
75% of the enterprises that have implemented AI to analyse data will shift from the pilot phase to operational phase by 2024. This could result in much faster and responsible AI providing better human-machine collaboration and greater alignment of decisions throughout the organization.
33% of large organizations will practise decision intelligence, which brings together several disciplines including decision management and decision support. This helps organizations in taking better and faster decisions. According to the World Economic Forum, 49% of all the world’s data will be on public cloud by 2025 and 30% of all data will be real time data – thus enabling faster and real time decision making based on facts.
Data-driven approach to decision making and insights based on analytics are now playing a major role in companies to make better decisions in various functions like optimizing business processes, strengthening supply chains, developing better marketing strategies, and optimizing costs, among others.
At the industry level, there has been a pronounced shift in usage of technology to improve efficiency and productivity. The third industrial revolution that had brought in electronics, computers and automation is now giving way to Industry 4.0 (or the fourth industrial revolution) where Cyber-Physical Systems, AI, Internet of Things are gradually replacing their predecessor technologies. Industry 4.0 works towards creating decentralized, autonomous, and real-time manufacturing practices. As per a McKinsey estimate, the industry 4.0 is expected to deliver value in the range of US$ 1.2 trillion to US$ 3.7 trillion.
A certain chunk of businesses across industries (and around the globe) have proactively adopted data-driven decision making and are called pioneers in adopting data-driven culture. There are others (also called followers) who have followed the pioneers in transforming their organizations. Then there are some ‘late adopters.’ Finally, there are the rest of the companies who stay back and avoid this lane.
Despite the ever-growing need to embrace data-driven culture, they are either unaware of the impact of data on their growth or face resistance from within. They are called laggards. Possibly, these organizations may sooner or later lose their customers, their business, and their existence altogether. However, nobody wishes to remain a laggard when it comes to acquiring customers and growing business. But one must realize that the means to achieve this, changes with time.
A data-driven culture is not blindly following numbers crunched by data; it must promote collaboration between different departments. Entities across the organizations must be able to use insights generated from data analytics, which will not just help with problem-solving and decision-making, but act as a platform for cooperation. The future of businesses – both large and small – will depend on how effectively they use data to survive, grow and transform themselves.