Embracing a Modern Culture of Data
As our digital lives continue to expand rapidly, we are not only creating an increasingly large volume of data, we are also relying on data more and more in our personal lives to make informed decisions. This morning, before you left for work, I bet you interacted with some form of insight or analysis to help you make one or more decision.
Did you check your weather app to see if you needed an umbrella; what about Waze or Google Maps to plot your route to work? Maybe you asked your smart speaker for a flash update to get you up to speed on the breaking news/transfer news/gossip so you can amaze and enthrall your colleagues with your grasp of current affairs during a conversation over the coffee machine!
In 2020, the volume of data is expected to reach 44 trillion gigabytes (zettabytes), a ten-fold growth since the last 6 years… and we are expecting another 100+ zettabytes in the next 5 years.
“More than 150 zettabytes (trillion gigabytes) of data will need analysis by 2025”
Forbes, 2019
We are constantly making data-led decisions in our personal life and yet we continue to struggle to do the same in our work. Why? How can we use our corporate data to infer actionable insights, and make these insights integral to decision making and at the heart of everything we do? Is it all about the data and the technology?
Electrifying times
Let’s take the analogy of a car manufacturer who decides to build an electric version of an existing model. From a technical perspective, this is transformational, the designers and engineers must effectively build a brand-new car; it’s not just a matter of replacing a petrol engine with an electric motor. The entire structure and workings of the car need to be changed. Have you noticed that electric cars don’t have grills at the front? This is because they don’t need to suck in air for the engine and radiator as they don’t have them. So, this means even the bodywork is different.
But (and this is the critical bit) it’s not all about the technology. The transformation requires engineers and service technicians to be equipped and trained, the dealers need to be taught in how to sell the new model, third-party suppliers engaged in the supply chain need to provide new components, and marketeers need to be brought in to help elevate the brand and promote the model. A new infrastructure and charging network needs to be implemented to ensure you can find somewhere to charge your car and even the drivers need to be educated in how to drive and maintain their new cars.
Finally, and most importantly, there is actually an imperative to transform. Simply put, new environmental legislation, culminates in the banning of carbon-fuelled cars in the next 15 years. If the manufacturers and all their associated ecosystems don’t transform, they will be out of business.
In our world of data and analytics, in addition to the green benefits, that injection of electricity and the potential for incredible power (check out the latest Porsche Taycan featured recently on Top Gear) are synonymous with data volumes and increased storage and computing power. Organisations that run businesses based on the same operational model pre ‘Data Rush’ (or carbon-based) era, run a high risk of under-utilising potentials for growing their business, being less profitable and not focusing on customer needs. They will struggle to exploit the opportunities that cloud data storage enables and Machine Learning and Analytics provides.
Critically, as with the case of the automobile industry, those organisations that don’t transform to embrace the data revolution are at risk and the risk is now. In 2016 Forrester predicted that, “Insights-driven businesses will steal $1.2 trillion every year from non-insights-driven businesses by 2020”. But as with the car analogy, just building the technology is only part of the story. At Slalom, we talk about creating a “Modern Culture of Data” to realise these opportunities.
Creating a data-driven culture
When we talk about the key ingredients for enabling a modern culture of data, we consider five core elements.
Getting the tech and data right is imperative and we refer to this as “Transparency”; essentially building integrated data and flexible scalable systems. But at the centre of everything needs to be a “Bold Vision” which charts a clear path to the end goal — and core to realising this vision is people. In the past couple of years, I have regularly been asked by clients to help them implement a data lake/machine learning/analytics capability…and these requests all miss the point.
You can’t “implement ML” without understanding what the vision for the organisation is and how this is going to align to your overarching corporate strategy or transformation. The organisation’s vision must be clear, driven from the top with employee-wide buy-in. People need to work together across the organisation, reasoning with analytical mindset, moving away from gut-feel model of operation.
During the last few years, a common aspect of vision which keeps cropping up in conversation and even corporate mission statements is the goal of “monetising” their data. They are looking for that golden nugget based on the data and the business they think they have; but this may not be the business they are or should be. Data can be a real soul searcher when explored properly and in the case of some firms a means to sense check their evolution.
A colleague of mine once worked at a well known airline at a time when they were trying to understand the value map of the organisation. “We are in the airline business” soon translated into “we are a commodity trading business” as it began specialising in the futures markets. You could rationally say that global burger chains are actually a real estate businesses not fast food outlets (they need data to increase market share, consumption of burgers is a bi-product of exceptional operations and data analytics). So, when we look at our vision for our Modern Culture of Data we need to think outside of what we have today, and consider how we need to innovate.
Establishing trust in your data, tools and processes is the third element, which we call “Guardianship”, which in turn is supported by “Data Literacy”. Ask yourselves, how many decision makers understand the data presented to them? Do they for example know the difference between correlation and causation? This is critical if you are going to make decisions from insights. We need to develop the mindset and skills that drive action. Finally we need to introduce new “Ways of Working” to embed insights into behaviours and operations — this is not only a cultural shift but a mind-shift in how people think and act.
Want to know more?
If you are interested in understanding more about these pillars or hearing about how we at Slalom are supporting many organisations in achieving a Modern Culture of Data:
- Take a look at our dedicated site: https://www.slalom.com/modern-culture-data
- Come along to our Moonshot event on 5 March at the Gherkin. We are hosting this event with our partners at AWS, Snowflake and Tableau and will share how each of us are enabling organisations to achieve their visions. Find out more and register.
“We crave for new sensations but soon become indifferent to them. The wonders of yesterday are today common occurrences”
Nikola Tesla
Richard leads Data & Analytics at Slalom in London and has worked as a consultant in this field for over 20 years. During his career he has led many programmes for large banks, building societies, insurance, pharmaceutical, retail, consumer packaged goods, manufacturing and public sector clients; formulating and implementing data strategies as well as designing and delivering solutions across a range of technologies.
