With recession and inflationary fears front of mind this year for businesses as well as consumers, enterprises are tasked with reducing costs. Through proper analysis of their digital transformation initiatives, it’s possible for businesses to do more with less. Central to this is the role of data.

Today, extracting actionable insights from data is fundamental to unlocking long term business value. Despite this, a lot of companies still wrestle with various data analytics challenges – from driving better transparency and efficiency across their supply and value chains, to removing data silos to improve decision-making throughout their organisation.

Business leaders are acutely aware that it’s easier to produce large volumes of data than it is to translate it into valuable information. Knowing the right questions to ask of your data and how to use the insights to build a long-term Business Intelligence (BI) strategy can be confusing for many organisations. In a period of number crunching, there are several strategies businesses can introduce to fast-forward their transformation to becoming a data-led company and effectively, do more with what is at their disposal.

Implementing the right data infrastructure

Data silos prevent effective data analysis, resulting in duplicated or inaccurate data entry, lack of productivity, and ultimately, no single source of truth. However, with the right, data-centric IT infrastructure in place, organisations can break down their data silos to bring together previously disconnected areas of the business.

Migrating key operations and workloads to the cloud is the first step to ensuring you have digital infrastructure to effectively process all data from across the entire business. Although moving to the cloud may seem overwhelming at first, the benefits are evident almost immediately. According to Epicor’s 2023 Industry Insights report, 46% of businesses are now primarily or entirely in the cloud, with 89% either strongly or somewhat agreeing that ‘Cloud ERP’ is the favoured decision.

Implementing the right industry-specific cloud solutions for your unique business needs enables you to create a data-centric infrastructure that integrates multiple data streams with business flows and can be connected to BI tools that can support your enterprises’ data mapping. Being in the cloud also means employees can easily access company data remotely and from almost any location with an internet connection enabling faster data-driven decision-making.

Not only does the cloud provide greater flexibility, it also brings with it enhanced security. In today’s landscape of increasing cybersecurity threats from data breaches to ransomware attacks, having data stored securely in the cloud provides reassurance that companies can reduce their level of risk.

Actionable industry insights at your disposal

 Complex data is becoming increasingly accessible. As hardware and modelling costs are made more affordable for businesses, we’re seeing a world where access to AI and Machine Learning (ML) tools are being democratised. For businesses to leverage these tools effectively, decision-makers must choose a technology partner that can enable these powerful capabilities through dedicated support. Proper integration of data innovations should lead to more efficient and cost-effective end-to-end processes.

Once IT infrastructure is cloud and data-centric, businesses should plan to incorporate AI and ML into business flows to automate data analysis. Capturing daily tasks is key to this – knowing how often they’re being done, who does them and their level of success. Many organisations use AI applications to just improve one single task, however, by analysing multiple business flows, companies can gather actionable insights that benefit the entire business.

Data-centric needs to be people-centric

A common failure of automation and data initiatives is organisations replacing people instead of equipping them with the right tools to understand the technology and therefore, enable them to make more informed decisions. To make these initiatives a success, businesses must have a clear understanding of their goals and why they’re analysing this data in the first place. Following this, it’s about ensuring accuracy and making sense of the data; from identifying trends, to pinpointing breaks in business flow, stress points and more.

People must be central to technology investment decisions, whether it’s employees or customers who are having to adapt to significant technological changes at pace. To make the transition as seamless as possible, it’s imperative that new digital solutions are deployed selectively, and only once a business is confident it will help achieve its goals and provide them with a strategic, competitive advantage.

Thinking outside the box

Ensuring digital transformation will maximise the success of data analysis initiatives is complex. Decision-makers must look outside their organisation and understand which business flows to optimise from a customer’s perspective. For example, automating the end-to-end quote to cash process ensures data can be collected immediately and analysed holistically across a company. With all data stored in one accessible location, insights can be quickly drawn delivering instant value to a business.

Becoming data-led

There are three stages to a business’ data strategy. First is being data-informed, where an organisation is getting a basic level of insight from their data, but doesn’t know how to transform it into actionable insights. Second is becoming a data-driven business, where decisions are made using these insights. Unfortunately, this tends to be where companies’ data strategies stop. The third stage requires a company to become truly data-led.

When an organisation’s data-led, there’s a constant feedback loop of information – allowing companies to make immediate, well-informed decisions because that intelligence is now entrenched into their key business flows. Being data-led means being so purposeful with a data and automation strategy that a business never stops making beneficial decisions based on insights.

As businesses continue to grapple with the economic uncertainties of 2023, they can be sure of the power of data in helping to unlock long-term business value. If organisations work through strategies that allow them to leverage real value from their data, business leaders will be able to make better informed decisions for the long-term future of their businesses leading to better efficiency, productivity, and success.