Why you need a better data strategy
Essentially, cloud technology is allowing us to be sloppy with our data. Instead of sorting through it and keeping what we need, different kinds of storage are letting us pile up a bigger drawer of junk data. It’s enabling us to store everything.
But that’s not a strategy. It’s not enabling us to draw out insights and unlock new solutions.
Machine learning and artificial intelligence only offer parts of the answer. Yes, they’re important, central elements of any plan to dealing with data, but robots are not a panacea.
Technology shouldn’t put us in business, it should enable our businesses. But the way it’s being used now is making us think we're addressing these problems, when really it’s just letting us avoid confronting them. To manage data effectively, we need humans to focus on the business challenges that data can help to solve. Machine learning needs hard work and enterprise to provide context and direction for its operations.
How to think about big data
At 2016’s USC Global Supply Chain Summit, I shared my one simple goal: to get all of us thinking about three aspects of the big data challenge that can save us from extinction.
Specifically, I recommend focusing on three aspects of the big data challenge – controlling cost and complexity, reducing volume and risk, and improving insight. Here’s how:
- First, develop a data strategy. I am not talking about something from IT, I am talking about a strategy with the same level of support and funding as any other product. That’s right: make data strategy the new product.
- Next, focus on data integration as a large part of that digital strategy. Whether your data comes from wearable devices or cars, the resulting data needs to integrate into your ecosystem in order for it to be used to address your business challenges.
- Third, simplify and standardize your data to reduce the size of your data lake and prevent it from becoming a swamp. To use your data, you need to be able to quickly sort through the weeds.
How EY can help
Analytics consulting services
We can help you apply intelligence in your organization to grow, protect and optimize your business by harnessing the latest technologies.
Read moreRelated article
The questions you should be asking
Gathering and storing the right data is only the first step. Ensuring you can access it is a vital second.
But none of this will add any value to your business if you aren’t asking the right questions to extract insights from that data. So ask yourself:
- How well am I managing today's data explosion?
- What is my data strategy, and how does it support my business goals?
- How can my data help to solve some of my toughest business challenges?
- How much data am I willing to own and protect?
- What insights are a must and which are nice to have?
- What steps do I need to take as we move toward a more digitally connected supply chain?
And if you aren’t asking those questions, you can be sure that someone else will be, which is why today’s unprecedented volume of data is also leading to unprecedented business disruption. This trend is only going to continue.
Summary
If you want your data to be a source of insights rather than headaches, you need to develop and implement the right data strategy.