When and why has data become so important?

When and why has data become so important today?

It started with Law and Compliance. Our interaction with data began with using it as a history record to prove something, defend ourselves, and protect our integrity. It is understandable to see data as an easier way to track information without having to write it down in your book.

Then came the Cloud. It has unlocked all the vast possibilities of data to improve the way we do things, interact and our customer experience. In a practical sense, there are 3 main opportunities associated with data today:

1. Operational Efficiency: Data has massive capacity at finding the subtleties and patterns that we may inadvertently miss to help us evaluate our processes. If at this point you are not using data to understand the runnings of your company, you are lacking behind.  
2. Revenue Opportunities: The more data you gather, the better your product and services would cater to consumers with relevance and specificity. In this case, how you extract and apply valuable insights from your data could generate really big bucks. So remember, data is money!
3. Risk Management: Best way to not get into trouble is to analyse your data. Spot the patterns, understand your consumers, numbers & KPIs, and you’ll help your company become less prone to risks.

But before someone jumps on to purchase all kinds of data solutions and softwares they could implement, remember to contextualise and practice data governance. Nowadays, privacy remains a huge challenge when it comes to data usage. How could regulators transform companies into reliable custodians of Big Data? Will individual data ownership be a real thing in the future?

While there are still many questions about navigating data, we have no time left to delay solving them. It is likely we will reach a point where we cannot live without data (or didn’t we already?) Whether we like it or not, data is the new oil that fuels everything we do in the modern world. So why not start discovering Big Data now? Learn with our expert, David Hardoon in just 30 minutes for free!