There is no question that we are deeply in the era of “big data.” Organizations and their workers are subject to a barrage of information from myriad sources on a minute-by-minute basis during the day. Some of it is incredibly useful, providing vital metrics including market knowledge, user information, and product insights. Some of it is less useful (e.g., social media user X is cranky because they happened to spill their coffee while using your product). As you and your employees sort through all this information, you’re no doubt asking yourself, “Am I making the most of my business data?”

For leaders at both smaller and larger organizations, the answer to this question is often, understandably, “I really don’t know.”

How do you process and use all the information coming at you, including teasing out the most valuable data to improve business processes, maximize customer and employee satisfaction, and make decisions about the future of your business? We’ve put together this guide to help you evaluate how you’re using all this material currently and determine how to make the most of your business data.

Understanding Your Organization’s “Three V’s”

In 2001, industry analyst Doug Laney identified the significance of the so-called “Three V’s” as hallmarks of big data. These are Volume, Velocity, and Variety. Big data involves terabytes and terabytes of undifferentiated information (volume), coming over the transom at an astounding speed (velocity), from a baffling array of structured and unstructured sources (variety). Latter-day tech thinkers have proposed the importance of several more V’s, including Veracity (data quality), Value (market impact), Variability (how changeable data is), and Visualization (how understandable it is).

For organizations seeking to manage, understand, and effectively deploy the information streaming towards them, it’s important to be aware of these V’s. Some are more controllable, including visualization via Business Intelligence platforms and value via data-driven decision making. Some, like velocity and volume, are no less significant for being less governable. In fact, they dictate many back-end processes in modern business.

A whole industry has evolved around Business Intelligence and Business Analytics to help organizations direct and deploy their data streams. If you are a business leader, proper guidance, including understanding the V’s, can help you make big data work for you, not overwhelm you.

Optimizing Access to Your Data

If you seek to make the most of your business data, proper storage of and access to that information is critical. Notably, you need to know where that data is coming from, how to secure it, and how to distribute it to employees that need it.

The rise of Business Intelligence (BI) platforms, in partnership with back-end and front-end technologies, including Constituent Relationship Management (CRM), Supply Chain Management SCM), and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), has helped organizations more efficiently collect and collate data while effectively visualizing it for users. However, because this involves such a maze of interfaces, it is often helpful to work with a consultant who can do an “as-is” analysis of your data stream and help identify or build a usable dashboard to provide ready access to the most valuable information.

The information can then be used to drive critical business decisions. Momentum recently provided Business Analysis, Technical Analysis/Development, and Organizational Change Management services to help a major municipality create a tax delinquency data warehouse and case management system, which the city can use to open and manage delinquent tax cases with local businesses and residents. The program provides a data storage solution and tracking approach that optimizes government employee access to mission-critical information.

Using Your Business Data to Maximize Customer and Employee Satisfaction

Equipping employees with the tools they need to do their jobs well is key to ensuring their on-the-job satisfaction. By optimizing access to the data they require and automating tasks that don’t require human intervention, you can maximize your employee’s happiness while also better serving your clients and customers.

This happens in three ways:

1. Better data management, including enhanced workflows, helps drive increased responsiveness to constituent needs. For example, our consultants recently helped a client implement Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) software for several government entities. One project implemented new CRM software and incorporated automation that included automated responses back to constituents, automated assignments to the appropriate resource based on key issues, and automated tracking of responses. Through this software, thousands of citizens received the information they needed when they needed it. Our client was also able to expedite and track their responses.
2. Optimized data-based automation empowers organizational leaders to spend less time on mundane tasks and more time envisioning the business’s future.
3. Quality data from and about your customers also helps you make better decisions about the programs and products you offer them, whether that’s ice cream toppings or government services. This is where the art and science of Business Analytics come in because it is not enough simply to know what data you have. It’s also essential to use it to drive the future of your business.

Fueling the Future of Your Business with The Data You Collect Now

What would you change about your business if you had a crystal ball to tell you about your future customers or upcoming trends in your industry? Business Analytics (BA) is the practice of using the information you collect (your BI) to predict what might happen in your industry in the future. Such prescriptive analysis then helps you make strategic, data-driven decisions about the future of your business.

Without good, clean data and ease of access to it, your organization may not be able to anticipate important growth and improvement opportunities. But that data in and of itself cannot help anticipate those opportunities. Skilled interpretation of the information, united with forward-thinking, proper communication, and appropriate implementation, is key to making the most of your business data to fuel your organization’s future.

Making the Most of Your Business Data Involves Many Moving Parts

Using data to drive your day-to-day processes and long-range business decisions is a given. However, making the most of your business data is an art. Further, it is a collaborative art, one that involves you, your employees, your customers, and trusted advisors.

You CAN employ big data to your advantage. Navigating all that information does not need to be overwhelming. Contact Momentum to discuss how to make the most of your business data today.