data strategy Archives - AfricaBusiness.com

29Feb

By Africa BusinessNo Comments

Tech

Why Narrowing the Distance to your Organisation’s Desired Data Maturity starts with your People

Lee Wearne, Data Strategist at Insight Consulting In an era defined by information and innovation, where there’s more competition than ever before, businesses all understand the importance and value of data. However, collecting and storing data is one thing, but positioning it as a strategic business asset that can fuel effective and intelligent decision-making requires a high level of organisational data maturity. Data maturity is best described as a measure of how well an organisation uses its data to achieve its goals. When you start measuring an organisation’s data maturity you set a benchmark that can be used for comparison during future tests. The objective, then, is to ensure that an organisation’s data maturity is moving in the right direction, and if it is not, to make the nece...

29Feb

By Africa BusinessNo Comments

Business

The synergy of business and IT will be key to harnessing Africa’s full potential

By Upuli De Abrew, Director at Insight Consulting The African continent is poised for economic growth, rapid urbanisation and increasing incomes with its population expected to reach about 1.7-billion people by 2030, making it crucial for businesses to fast-track data strategies if they are to remain competitive and benefit from these developments. A major challenge in achieving these goals is that data and its associated processes have historically been seen as an IT function; while the IT department might have the knowledge and technical expertise to execute data strategies, many fail to deliver a return on investment as the initial process of defining the 'what' of the data strategy is not business-led. Often, data strategies that are led by IT departments focus on the 'how' – the te...

27Nov

By Africa BusinessNo Comments

Tech

Mind the gap: Narrowing the distance to your organisation’s desired data maturity starts with your people

By Lee Wearne, Data Strategist at Insight Consulting In an era defined by information and innovation, where there’s more competition than ever before, businesses all understand the importance and value of data. However, collecting and storing data is one thing, but positioning it as a strategic business asset that can fuel effective and intelligent decision-making requires a high level of organisational data maturity. Data maturity is best described as a measure of how well an organisation uses its data to achieve its goals. When you start measuring an organisation’s data maturity you set a benchmark that can be used for comparison during future tests. The objective, then, is to ensure that an organisation’s data maturity is moving in the right direction, and if it is not, to make t...

29Jun

By Africa BusinessNo Comments

Business, Tech

How to find the story in a business’s data and then action it

By Rene McGregor, Head of Consulting at Insight Consulting Data literacy is a journey and is key to an organisation’s data strategy While it is widely accepted that data is the lifeblood of our increasingly digital world, not all organisations are able to collect, manage, analyse, interpret and then apply insights from data. If data were currency, then only some people in some organisations truly know how to earn it and spend it. It’s broadly understood that a data literate person can read, understand, communicate, argue and apply insights from data. Often, it is believed that a once-off literacy intervention or solution will suddenly “upskill” a workforce, allowing the C-suite to move on to another project. This could not be further from the truth. Data literacy is a journey whose goa...

26Apr

By Africa BusinessNo Comments

Business, Main

C-suites should drive data strategies to avoid disconnect with business strategy

Enterprises must prioritise security, governance and user adoption for successful implementation By Lee Wearne, Senior Business Intelligence Consultant at Insight Consulting The urgency of implementing enterprise data management strategies comes from an acute awareness that businesses need to put their data to work effectively to influence business decisions and efficiency, and ultimately help steer the direction of the business. C-suites understand that this urgency is not a fad, that an effective enterprise data strategy is a fundamental component of their digital transformation journeys. However, unless the data strategy is driven from the top of the organisation, there will - at some point - become a discrepancy between the business and data strategy. This disconnect can result i...