Community Short Facts - December 2021/January 2022

Goodbye gut feeling

The benefits of a data-driven business model extend far beyond operational efficiency - into personnel development and customer loyalty, right through to the identification of promising acquisitions. Once top management has recognized this, the first step towards a data strategy has already been taken. The next step is to communicate this realization across all areas of the company. This often triggers a small cultural revolution, as a data-centric company only works in agile and cross-functional structures. It is advisable to appoint a Chief Data Officer to drive the transformation forward by raising awareness and designing training courses for employees. However, these are only helpful if the decision-makers also have the courage to break up encrusted structures, dissolve departmental silos and remove anything that prevents employees from pursuing common goals. This implies saying goodbye to outdated IT systems and gradually setting up a cloud-based digital infrastructure. Disparate, unstructured and monofunctional (silo) data can then be collected in a data lake, where it is prepared for data mining.