UNLOCK YOUR DATA ASSETS

Can data assets bring new business opportunities? We know how! In this blog Erik shared his view on how data assets can win new business, and how one customer successfully saves hours and Euro’s with the right implementation partners. 

As Pedro Calado, Director, Financial Services, KPMG U.S., noted, “Unleashing data’s power requires elevating it to the status of a strategic asset.” Organizations are drowning in data and yet starving for real insights. Today state-of-the-art data analytics solutions are readily available but understanding the often-implicit relations and causalities to support better decision making and operational and customer excellence can be challenging. Finding, understanding, and using data requires strong collaboration between business and functional stakeholders, with a strong understanding of end users’ (i.e., customers’) needs. In many scenarios, data may be outdated, inaccurate, inconsistent, undefined, or stuck in silos, spread across the organization. 

Big data business is worth approximately USD 139 billion in 2020 and is expected to top USD 230 billion by 2025. With how users and organizations are accelerating their digital adoption and transformation, we will not be surprised if we surpass these expectations much earlier. However, the value of data does not lie in its volume but its quality. Data quality determines the accuracy of your insights, and in turn, the feasibilities of your strategic decisions. 

Understanding the business of data
As we talk about data quality, the impact of poor-quality data leads to inaccuracies and process failures. Inadvertently, loss of investments and revenue dollars too if such data is used for critical decision-making. The business of data is ever-growing – besides the predicted value of big data, another area is the MDM market’s revenue opportunities. MDM or the global Master Data Management market is estimated to grow at 19.8% CAGR to reach USD 27.9 billion by 2025. These signals both a commitment from markets to continuously invest in MDM programs and confidence in MDM benefits. 

MDM improves data quality, enables consistencies, supports workforce collaboration, and provides the elusive “single view of the truth.” And we should also look beyond just master data when planning for a single view. Other data assets include public and private forms of reference data and physical and business metadata. With one source of truth for all “entities”— data on customers, employees, products, and things, and a standard way to manage and show information hierarchies—you have an invaluable asset for a range of use cases, including customer experience, regulatory compliance, and data security and governance.

Another area to consider when understanding how to leverage your data’s most significant business value is maintaining flexibility to innovate. When our customers ask us to design a connected data platform for their analytical needs, we do so with a fully managed solution and a template for their own managed solutions. This brings flexibility to our customers when they want to scale up or try greenfield data analysis methods—for example, applying machine learning to automate analytical business models. The applications for machine learning are diverse and can be found in just about any field or kind of business. The benefits for commercial, government, and social ventures are immense. 

Unlocking your data access with a singular focus
When you can manage and share all your data assets, you stand to gain the most value. Data can power mission-critical operations, analytical processes and transform a good customer experience into an excellent customer experience. With constantly evolving data from diverse channels and sources, business teams can no longer rely on simple office automation or outdated data management tools.

To help our clients manage all their data sources and effectively consume shared data assets, we work with partners like TIBCO and Systemation. TIBCO EBX™ empowers our customers to manage data assets across the organization with an all-in-one approach. It is designed for the entire business and can be used by business stakeholders and data experts alike. Connected Data Group connects the foundation of excellent data management with translated business needs from our customers and their customers, thus creating different data-driven use cases on TIBCO’s current and predictive analytics solutions. Our role is to architect the best use of such solutions and work with partners like Systemation, who are experts in achieving data quality, significantly raising data quality from its source.

Winning new business by connecting data and analytics
The most rewarding experience when working to connect data and analytics is seeing how it translates to our customers’ internal and external wins. Take Cloetta, for example. Cloetta is a leading confectionary company in the Nordic region of Europe and the Netherlands. Its products are in more than 40 markets worldwide, with Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Germany, and the U.K. as the main markets. You can imagine the volumes of both internal and external data from different parts and objects, making timely and accurate data analysis an extremely challenging task. Cloetta, in consultation with Connected Data Group, was able to determine that it needed to enrich its current solution with a data virtualization tool that would make data available using the existing EDW or the data virtualization tool itself. Cloetta decided on the TIBCO Data Virtualization software after determining its Value for Money score and based on stellar customer reviews. 

The TIBCO Data Virtualization server was added as a new layer within the existing B.I. Solution, with the possibility to process local and external data faster. The data served now combined with internal EDW data, and over time, the TIBCO Data Virtualization server should transform into Cloetta’s logical data warehouse. As a result, the customer saved hundreds of hours and thousands of euros each year from creating reports while significantly improving forecast accuracy and supply-chain understanding. Get the full success story of Cloetta here. 

In conclusion, getting data assets ready to make them work for your business requires solution partners who can understand your needs. By putting data at the core, robust data foundations and an architecture that can flexibly deliver on emerging needs and priorities are key to your success. 

WANT TO KNOW MORE?
Please feel free to contact me. I am happy to answer you.

Till soon!

Erik