Data Strategy
A well-thought-out data strategy is essential for making informed decisions, increasing efficiency, and improving customer experiences. It can also help you achieve business goals and assert yourself in the digitized and globalized world.
The development and implementation of this strategy is the basis for any further data-related activities.
Why do companies need a data strategy?
Make decisions faster and more effectively
Everything becomes available faster and in the shortest possible time, a sign for companies that they too must react faster and more efficiently—preferably without relying on their own gut feeling. While this can help in many moments, it never includes all factors. The situation is different when it comes to decisions that are based on well-founded data and a success-oriented data strategy.
Increase efficiency and optimize processes
Through a data strategy, companies can identify and optimize inefficient processes and thus also find areas where resources are wasted or unused. The result is higher productivity — and therefore significant cost savings. The next step in this process is the use of artificial intelligence, which allows processes to be additionally automated.
Improve compliance and risk management
Improving compliance and risk management are unpopular topics and yet it is so important: data protection, transparency, and compliance. Establishing data governance ensures clear policies and risk mitigation, e.g. in the area of data protection and regulation, but also a customer- and employee-centric focus - after all, stakeholder data should also be used securely and with integrity.
Establish new business models
Digitalization is progressing and our world is changing — companies must also change in order to remain competitive in the long term. A well-founded data strategy can support new business or monetization opportunities and develop hyper-personalized products and services, but also optimize existing products and services and adapt them to market trends.
This is how we go about establishing a data strategy
From the basis to definition to implementation — we at The Data Institute support you on the journey to a data-driven company.
Create the basis for the data strategy
As a first step of cooperation, we are happy to introduce Data Audit through to gain transparency and an overview of the current status quo not only for us, but also for the company. This usually creates some aha effects and reveals low hanging fruits and use cases that can be worked with in the next steps.
Define goals for data strategy
The goals must then be set for a strategy. The data strategy is derived from the corporate strategy and is inextricably linked to the company's goals. In cooperation with various stakeholders, we set short, medium and long-term goals with regard to new products, process optimization or customer satisfaction. The goals set should be verifiable through time-defined milestones.
Define data sources, revise dashboards and visualization
The data audit provides an overview of the data sources that are used in the company and the stakeholders who should have access to data. In order to enable efficient self-service, the next step should be to address the dashboards and visualization, as well as the data sources and processes through which data is collected and processed in the company.
Establish data governance and create transparency
No strategy without regulations! Data Governance provides an overview and ensures that guidelines are set for use in the company. This involves coordinating and combining the work of various stakeholders and managers within the company, including ensuring compliance with legal requirements, secure access to data, and reducing risks and costs.
Culture eats Strategy for Breakfast
The data strategy must fit the company - and yet it requires a cultural change. This must be accompanied and exemplified in order to finally enable and support all employees to incorporate data into their daily work, use their own dashboards and make decisions based on these.
Data strategy in our framework
We always work with the organization, culture and architecture framework.
Because in our opinion, these 3 areas are the most important factors for successfully anchoring data in the company in the long term.
The data strategy comprises exactly these three factors.
The organization determines who has access to which data that architecture provides the technological and data modelling framework and the culture enables employees to enjoy working with data in the long term, because it structures how data is collected and processed.
The Data Institute — the strong partner in establishing a data strategy
We want companies to quickly get an impact and see what they can do with data. At the same time, we have an overall view of the company and want to implement long-term strategies that enable employees to work with data independently.
What is a data audit anyway?
A data strategy is a comprehensive plan that defines how an organization collects, manages, analyzes, and uses its data to inform and improve business decisions. At its core, it is about recognizing data as a valuable resource and ensuring that it is used effectively to achieve business goals.
The strategy includes defining goals that align with the overall corporate strategy, identifying and integrating relevant data sources, visualizing data for better understanding and decision-making, establishing Data Governance to ensure compliance and data security, as well as to create transparency and accessibility of data within the company. It enables companies to make better and faster decisions, increase operational efficiency, improve customer experience, manage risks, reduce costs, and support new business models. An effective data strategy is critical to staying competitive and innovative in today's data-driven economy.
Who needs a data strategy?
Data is the new oil, gold, the sun, or simply the asset that we will all have to use in the future in order to remain competitive. As soon as data is collected, a data strategy should therefore also be established - even during start-ups, in order to ensure scalability immediately. And even long-established companies should regularly question their use of data and ensure that their data strategy is up to date.
The services provided by The Data Institute are aimed primarily at companies from the following industries media, logistics, retail and finances, but also on ecommerce Companies that want help with the effective use of data.
Who is involved in establishing a data strategy?
The data strategy - just like the corporate strategy, of course - must be defined by management. However, a strategy is only meaningful and sustainable if it is supported by the entire company. That is why it is immensely important to involve the data and IT department in the development of the strategy, as well as data protection officers and the compliance department, but also marketing and sales teams that are already working with a lot of customer data and are working on the company's customer centricity.
Working at The Data Institute, we interview all stakeholders who are involved in establishing the data strategy and can thus directly discover hurdles and challenges.
What services can be combined withData Strategy?
Case studies on the subjectData Strategy
You can find suitable examples of our work on this topic in the following case studies:
Knowledge around Data Strategy
In addition to case studies, we also have various blog articles on the topic:
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