Understanding the relevance of information analysis can change the company’s scenario. Perceiving the value of having consistent information, analytical and decision making capacity are key aspects for companies to be aware of their actual moment, their main bottlenecks, and how to adopt measures to improve their results.
The analytical culture is becoming increasingly necessary, either with solutions that make available information, or in the development of teams for them to obtain higher capacity to analyze information.
This is a very important moment for the market, considering that companies have evolved to better decisions that promote stability and higher growth potential.
However, in this moment of transition and awareness of new possibilities, the market faces a model where decision making is based on the employee experience and intuition, and a history without much depth, and without wealth of information, which favors situations where choices are less assertive and don’t generate the expected results.
In the absence of clear information to guide the path to the desired results, the future of companies is often based on the human factor, which, naturally, may fail, due to the limitations of human analytical capacity.
What is Data-Driven Culture?
A company that adopts the Data-Driven culture is the one that opts for making strategic decisions based on data, either internal or market data, but in the essence of this culture it is mandatory that data will provide the direction of decisions that will guide the company’s course and results. Teams must also be prepared regarding the culture, the importance and usability of tools, so that more assertive, faster and safer decisions can be made.
In this scenario, the company promotes in its teams, through tools and qualification, the usability of information provided by data, either to understand the current scenario, or for prediction. The fact is that in the Data-Driven Culture, efficiency and assertiveness in actions are the consequences, and, for results expressed in the market, a growing number of companies are getting close to initiatives that lead them to this evolution.
Different from decisions based on employees’ experience and intuition, which was a valuable resource in the past, today decisions based on information usually improve, quickly, the results of the areas, demonstrating value, and becoming a solid and beneficial path.
An increasing number of companies transform their culture seeking more efficiency, since they operate in an extremely competitive market, which demonstrates that in short time it will be imperative for companies that want to survive and grow in their markets, to adopt the Data-Driven culture and improve their performances.
Benefits of being an analytical company
Companies seek improvement in their processes and performances to leverage their billing, position in the market, and, many times, their stability.
Who has never come across a case in the market where a decision made without basis was disastrous to the operation?
This is the main problem that data converted into information aim to solve. More assertiveness, more clarity, more history, more prediction, and, therefore, managers and teams with more basis to know how to solve issues related to losses, negotiations, improvement in production time, retention of customers, more assertiveness in their planning, more control of suppliers or optimization of costs and themes involving transport, for example.
These daily situations in any company require attention, because through them companies can get closer to a more efficient operation.
It can be observed in several cases numbers that demonstrate how much an operation that establishes data as safe source of information to guide decisions can advance in their goals. With that, we highlight the greatest benefits observed when these companies adopt the Data-Driven culture:
- Greater certainty of the business areas and the company scenario in general;
- Greater clarity of bottlenecks and prediction of future occurrences;
- Possibility of making decisions that establish improvement in these aspects, and solve losses, wears, better negotiations, planning, etc.;
- Minimization of future failures;
- Improvement in general results, either reducing losses or increasing results;
- Greater opportunity of market competitiveness;
- More safety in decision making;
- Higher speed in decision making.
We can also observe many other benefits obtained in the transformation to a more analytical operation. But why does the market resist in developing employees or acquiring solutions that favor their goals?
According to Gustavo Castanheira, CTO at Dojo Technology, who has followed, over time, several implementations of data journey in large corporations’ operations, one of the main reasons observed is the formation of a data-driven culture that is nothing less than the behaviors people adopt regarding data.
“The consolidation of a data-driven culture requires long learning, and in the dynamic market, dominated by anxiety, few leaders support a data analysis learning program for their teams. Countless factors contribute to make each corporate analytical layer grow slowly, or not grow at all. Lack of leadership support, lack of vision regarding where data can lead us, lack of investments, aversion to risks, the good and old daily routine, hurry, lack of interest in studying, since, for the vast majority, our education pattern is to memorize contents or expect someone to bring the information ready (teacher), etc.”, says Castanheira.
We can also observe that companies are insecure with regard to investing in building data solutions. The market is experiencing a moment of learning in terms of how these solutions could, in fact, add value to their operations, and with that, there is reluctance in acquiring them.
Once leaders experience the data journey or perceive more deeply how transforming and necessary for the company these initiatives can be, defenses are reduced.
Castanheira complements: “The triad people, processes, and technology is created as gear for the development of analytical capacity in any organization. Transforming an organization from reporting to analysis, as well as evolving from data-rich (because systems generate much information), to data-centric (decisions based on data), demands short, medium, and long-term plan, according to Ryan Bean, in his book Fail Fast Learn Faster, Forbes top organizations take from 5 to 10 years to indicate that they are harvesting results and actually making data-driven decisions. Let’s put technology aside for a while, because it is not the bad guy in this path. It is really a paradox in a world that asks for agility, having patience and resilience to the data journey, where leadership is fundamental for the organization not to waste money and get lost in the way.”
How can companies adhere to the Data-Driven Culture?
One of the most important factors is education on the theme. As we mentioned above, the data theme is spreading across the market and a growing number of professionals are minimally aware of the existence of new possibilities.
It is understood that the more information leaders have access, more connected to the gains with Data-Driven culture they will be, and so they will bring innovations to corporations, and, therefore, better results.
Castanheira also highlights the importance of education, when it comes to culture transformation:
“Through leadership, qualification (constant data education program), and experimentation. When we talk about data solutions it may seem generic, but here we are talking about solutions that help analyze data (different from reporting). The process for acceptance and gain in maturity of data analysis solutions depend on a leadership that communicates data, that guides, encourages, and invests. As result, teams will feel safe to seek qualification, study, and look at data as a business asset, and not as something that merely comes from a system of information technology.
With people qualified and empowered, different questions start to emerge, and with that new ways of analyzing can bring answers that would never arise if only traditional reports were considered. A team engaged in the theme has courage to explore and innovate with data, because the work with data analysis is different from system implantation. With data, possibilities are countless, and people can learn with them too. Do you want to easily know whether an organization has low maturity in data analysis? Ask how much tolerance leaders have regarding experimentation with data, and how many times an analysis outside traditional reports has impacted on some decision making. Finally, this system of leadership, people, and experimentation needs to be working in an evolutionary and alive way.
In general, big revolutions or big and miraculous solutions tend to frustrate and generate unbalance in the organization (people, culture), or intolerance to exploration, wanting to ensure results in everything, but can also destroy data initiatives. Lead more, inspire, communicate, educate, and let data enter your life.”
Transformation and search for the new are usually very difficult, due to the uncertainties they generate, changes in thoughts and attitudes, and the extra strength they require. But the comfort zone in such a competitive market can be the great bad guy for companies wanting to evolve.
Appropriate partners that support this transition are as fundamental as deciding for transforming data in safe information source. The partners and the methodologies used will determine success.
Here at Dojo Technology we encourage our clients to think outside the box, to look differently at the same issues, and we constantly seek to enrich operations with data solutions and also education of teams to make this journey as simple as possible.
We aim at the success of our clients, because we understand that their success is the best answer we could have regarding the excellence we seek for our deliveries.
