This post is a new feature here on this blog, being guest blogging by data management professionals from all over the world. First up is Harri Juntunen, Partner at Twinspark Consulting in Finland:
Data and clever use of data in business has had and will have significant impact on value creation in the next decade. That is beyond reasonable doubt. What is less clear is, how this is going to happen? Before we answer the question, I think it is meaningful to make a conceptual distinction between data born companies and the rest of us.
Data born born companies are companies that were conceived from data. Their business models are based on monetising clever use of data. They have organised everything from their customer service to operations to be capable of maximally harness data. Data and capabilities to use data to create value is their core competency. These companies are the giants of data business: Google, Facebook, Amazon, Über, AirBnB. The standard small talk topics in data professionals’ discussions.
However, most of the companies are not data born. Most of the companies were originally established to serve a different purpose. They were founded to serve some physical needs and actually maintaining them physically, be it food, spare parts or factories. Obviously, all of these companies in e.g. manufacturing and maintenance of physical things need data to operate. Yet, these companies are not organised around the principles of data born companies and capabilities to harness data as the driving force of their businesses.
We hear a lot of stories and successful examples about how data born companies apply augmented intelligence and other latest technology achievements. Surely, technologies build around of data are important. The key question to me is: what, in practice, is our capability to harness all of these opportunities in companies that are not data born?
In my daily practice I see excels floating around and between companies. A lot of manual work caused by unstandardised data, poor governance and bad data quality. Manual data work simply prevents companies to harness the capabilities created by data born companies. Yet, most of the companies follow the data born track without sufficient reflection. They adopt the latest technologies used by the data born companies. They rephrase same slogans: automation, advanced analytics, cognitive computing etc. And yet, they are not addressing the fundamental and mundane issues in their own capabilities to be able to make business and create value with data. Humans are doing machine’s job.
Why? Many things relate to this, but data quality and standardization are still pressing problems in every day practice in many companies. Let alone between companies. We can change this. The rest of us can reborn from data just by taking a good look of our mundane data practices instead of aspiring to go for the next big thing.
P.S. The Google Brain team had reddit a while ago and they were asked “what do you think is underrated?”
The answer:
“Focus on getting high-quality data. “Quality” can translate to many things, e.g. thoughtfully chosen variables or reducing noise in measurements. Simple algorithms using higher-quality data will generally outperform the latest and greatest algorithms using lower-quality data.”
About Harri Juntunen:
Harri is seasoned data provocateur and ardent advocate of getting the basics right. Harri says: People and data first, technology will follow.
You can contact Harri here:
+358 50 306 9296
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