About Data Science

With an ever-increasing volume of data and information underlying most operations, Data Science has become an evolving and rapidly maturing aspect of each organization's day-to-day work. For those organizations early in their journey, there are a few important areas of consideration for where to invest your efforts.

Small & Medium Business Enterprises (SMBs) are typically characterized by having less than 500 employees. Forbes publishes an impressive list of these ‘small giants’, who showcase the best in American entrepreneurial spirit.

COVID-19 has disrupted the SMB sector and as the US begins to reopen, the US Chamber of commerce playbook recommends analyzing your sales data, customer behavior and ROI in order to understand what’s working and what you may need to adjust.

In many cases, the pre COVID-19 business model no longer works and a new value proposition needs to be evolved. Kickstarting analytics may be a competitive advantage for small enterprises -including non-profits, as the economy recovers.

In order to adopt and jump start analytics, here are a few key factors that need to be considered:

Most leaders today understand the importance of financial analytics and have invested their time and effort to monitor and disect their financial performance.

Oftentimes, however, financial analytics can be simple repetition of outcomes, and masque the actual drivers of performance, while failing to provide a sense of the road ahead. 

Why Financial Analytics is Failing Your Business

According to Gartner, the misuse of financial analytics can cost companies almost 1% of revenue per decision.

This misuse frequently comes down to a lack of clarity in the business problem, and and ineffective use of data and insights in a way more commonly applied to operations, marketing or sales. But, there are changes you can make to your approach to financial analytics that will help drive outcomes and insights.

You have spent a great deal of money on financial analytics, so your whole company benefits from insightful financial forecasts and insights. However, not every department can view the impact their part of the business is having on the whole. Here are some possible reasons why this is happening and a solution to help you solve this problem.

Why Financial Analytics is Failing You

With the advent of Industry 4.0, many companies are applying analytics to enable leaders throughout the organization see and understand the impact their area has on the financial health of the larger business and uncover strategies to advance their performance.

However, many firms that employ financial analytics are reporting immense challenges with executing their significant data initiatives. Here are some common challenges CEOs like yourself are facing.

As a CEO, you understand the innovation that data and analytics can unleash within your company. You know of course that companies like Google, Amazon, and Facebook leverage their information to beat the competition – but more importantly, there are a multitude of smaller to mid-size companies also using Big Data to create opportunities to stay ahead of the competition.

However, you have a problem. Your leadership is not getting the information and insights they need to help them stay aggressively positioned. Without insights on operations and customers, your company can not begin to utilize the power of data and could fall behind competitors in your industry.

To solve this problem, it is important to first understand the causes of your information bottleneck. After you understand the cause, then you can begin to get your leaders the information and insights they need.

Many CEOs find it difficult to initiate or sustain a culture of innovation within their organizations. Yet whether you're competing with companies like IBM, Google, and Microsoft or much smaller start-ups, to remain competitive, organizations of all sizes must maintain innovation as a way of life.

If you're struggling, consider the following five things to maintain creativity and innovation at the heart of your business' operations.

As the volume and sources of data has grown, so have the possible applications of analytics and data science. And with the advent of techniques such as machine learning and other AI-based solutions, the demand for access to data will continue to accelerate.

Leading organizations are responding to this acceleration by treating their data as an asset that can help them improve operational performance and identify opportunities for new revenue generation.

However, while certain industry sectors have quickly adopted analytics and data science — namely professional services, finance and insurance — there continues to be room for growth in the use of data in other industries, as well as an untapped usage of the data and analytics talent needed to support analytical efforts.

The amount of information and analytics organizations have access to today compared to years ago has increased exponentially. This deluge of data and information has created challenges and opportunities for CEOs who are accountable for the potential and actual achievements of analytics.

We aren't meeting current production/ service expectations. How do we change that?

When you became the CEO of your company, you understood the demands to manage effective functions and logistics of the organization. You also understood that building relationships with suppliers, shipping services, and warehouses were key to success. However, when you discover that your company is not meeting its production and service expectations, you realize that relationship building is not enough. If you do not have the appropriate tools in place to accommodate the desires of your customers, then your business relationships will crumble.