Digital and Analytical Transformation: the first stage of the data driven journey

A company with analytical maturity has a greater competitive advantage and generally presents better business results. But in practice, how many organizations are prepared for this?

In Brazil, the sectors best positioned in this regard are:

1. Financial services
2. Retail
3. Telecommunications and Technology

On the other hand, sectors such as advanced industries, basic industries, transport and infrastructure and consumer goods are more lagging behind in terms of digital maturity, as shown in the image below.

Regardless of your company's size and sector, you need to prepare for analytical transformation. And there's still time.

To help you, we created the Data Driven Journey, a roadmap that will help you identify your company's analytical maturity.

In this post, we will explain everything you need to know about pre-launch, the first stage of the data driven journey.

Stage 1: Pre-Launch Phase

Companies at this stage of the journey do not understand the value of data, however, they do not have the knowledge, people or resources necessary to act.

These are organizations that work with specific reports extracted from their systems, especially analyzed by Excel.

Furthermore, data-driven decision making is not a priority in these organizations. In general, their business decisions are based on factors such as experience, tradition and managers' intuition rather than data and concrete facts.

In summary, it can be said that organizations at this stage are "analytically behind" because:

• They do not consider analytics as a competitive advantage
• They do not have data analysis in any of their departments
• No support and commitment from senior management
• No well-established data driven culture

What does that mean?

In short, they are companies that are deficient in terms of data, technologies, people and processes. And therefore, they do not meet the necessary requirements to advance on the data driven journey.

Now that you have an idea about stage 1 companies, let’s explore a little more about their characteristics?

If you want to apply this in your company today, talk to us and find out how we can accelerate your data driven journey.

Data

The first step to identifying an organization's analytical maturity is understanding how it handles its data.

Why?

Bad, disorganized and decentralized data reveals an organization that does not exploit the power of its assets. And this lack of awareness can seriously harm your ability to learn more about your customers and make more informed decisions based on data.

In the pre-launch phase, it is common to find inconsistent, low-quality and non-standardized data. Therefore, analyzing information quickly and assertively is not an easily performed activity.

Furthermore, these companies spend a lot of time registering and searching for information from point systems - and spend almost twice as much time cross-checking information or carrying out specific explorations.

As a result, their efforts to search for data are disproportionate and exceed the time they spend making decisions and performing assertive data analysis.

The data from these companies is disorganized, decentralized and little explored.

At best, there are localized efforts, within specific departments, to produce basic reports, done manually, and implement simple analytical tools.

Finally, they do not have any business intelligence tools to monitor their departments.

Technologies

Here, technologies are not the protagonists of the business.

Stage 1 companies are used to managing their processes at a departmental level, carrying out basic, specific and localized analyses . To do this, they use simple tools and technologies such as control spreadsheets, Microsoft Office packages and Google Drive.

Furthermore, its databases are their own tools, which offer little storage capacity and do not have any type of integration with other company data sources.

People

In addition to deficiencies in the field of data and technologies, companies in stage 1 have a lot to develop in terms of people.

Why?

Top management in these companies rarely encourages the analytical mindset. In general, executives and leaders rely much more on their perceptions, beliefs and historical facts than on data. And this positioning interferes with the data-driven culture of the entire organization.

The lack of incentives from business leaders prevents the development of an integrated and uniform data driven culture across all sectors of the company. The result: a lack of preparation for digital transformation and a team without analytical skills.

Law Suit

At this stage, there are no analytical processes or strategies to support decision making. Businesses are managed instinctively and intuitively by senior management.

Thus, instead of managing processes in a data-driven way, companies at this stage deal with their projects in an uncoordinated way.

Also, due to the lack of indicators and analytical processes, business departments have the freedom to act completely independently from other sectors. Often, they only use extremely basic tools and rely heavily on Excel and Google Drive to manage these functions.

In terms of data analysis, business departments are responsible for extracting and handling information in a timely manner and carry out basic analyzes based on spreadsheets and disconnected information.

How to advance on the data driven journey

After understanding the pre-launch phase and discovering its characteristics, what is the next step?

If you identify with some of the aspects mentioned above, you can start taking action today to accelerate your data driven journey.

But to advance further, you need to:

1. Improve data quality and environment
2. Invest in analytical technologies
3. Reinforce senior management's commitment to the data driven culture
4. Develop an analytical mindset across all business departments

These are just a few examples of analytical capabilities that can be developed to help your company take the next step towards analytical transformation.

Why invest in analytics transformation

In the near future, analytical maturity will be decisive for companies to remain in such a competitive market.

With the analysis of your data driven journey, it is possible to identify the weaknesses of your business and develop effective strategies that, if implemented seriously, can help you overcome challenges towards a successful analytical transformation.

If you are having difficulties or want help from experts, count on us. Our team will help you speed up this process!