
Why You Need A Data Strategy To Win
You need a data strategy to win because it enables your business to not just survive, but thrive. Done right, it shines a light on the path to competitive advantage and success in a competitive market.
If you don’t have a data strategy or if it needs to be revised, you’re in the right place. In this blog post, we build on Step 1 – Why Business Strategy, Goals & Culture Boost Customer Conversion and Step 2 – Value from Customer & Market Insight & Data Discovery.
Let’s dig in.
What is a Data Strategy?
A data strategy is a document that sets the direction and path for your organisation to reach defined business goals through use of data, people, process and systems. It aligns with the business strategy and underlines where to play and how to win.
Why is a Data Strategy Important?
The volume of data is growing at a rate that’s difficult to imagine. The IDC predicts that the Global Datasphere will grow from 45 zettabytes in 2019 to 175 zettabytes by 2025. And addition to volume, there’s the variety, velocity, value and veracity to consider too.
Data is being applied to every corner of life as we know it. From understanding the mitochondria in our bodies through to space exploration and everything in between; data permeates it all. And importantly, there have never been more users and consumers of data – it shapes our human experience and the way the world does business.
This is why having a data strategy is so important for our businesses as we strive to help our communities to live healthier and happier lives.
Speaking of business, the pandemic has given rise to challenge and opportunity – it’s been an incredible time for humanity. As a result, we’ve seen an abundance of disruption and innovation. Companies like yours the world over, have digitally advanced, but meaningful digital transformation can’t happen without a robust data strategy.
The best data strategies focus on business problems and business outcomes. Let’s go a little deeper.
At Hexdon, we’re all about human experience. This means we put people first; our teams, our employees, our customers and our consumers all count. In fact, customer centricity is a competitive advantage and must be underpinned by data strategy.
“Companies at the top of their industries in Net Promoter Scores or satisfaction rankings for three or more years—grow revenues roughly 2.5 times as fast as their industry peers and deliver two to five times the shareholder returns over the next 10 years.”
Rob Markey (Bain & Company)
Actionable Insight at Speed
Speed to decision-making and action must also be considered in your data strategy. To achieve this competitive advantage, a balance of people and technology is required. Who will draw the contextual insight? Perhaps it’s a business analyst or an insight professional. Where will insight be drawn from? A Business Intelligence platform such as Qlik, PowerBI or Tableau would be an enabler. And who are the decision makers (C-suite) that will help the business to take action? Product designers, campaign analysts or eCommerce managers are examples of those that act on the strategy. Factoring speed to action into your data strategy means new ways of working to take evidence based action at speed.
A data strategy is critical to deliver (and measure) your business efficiencies and improve ROI. With many use cases for Artificial Intelligence, it’s possible to optimise human resources to focus on creative output and also higher value tasks; e.g. a chat bot can automatically answer questions in natural language and improve accuracy over time, ensuring human effort can focus on personalised customer care experiences.
Data strategy is an innovation enabler. At Hexdon, we’ve delivered innovative projects across the world with data at the heart. These innovations delivered quantified improvement in customer experience, faster access to business insight across a given region and improved ROI. A data strategy helps identify new products and new markets. A data strategy helps organisations to think differently and competitively; and ultimately the end result is an increase in sales, profit and shareholder value.
Data strategy can bring your organisation together because it’s set in alignment with your people, your business goals and outcomes. By ensuring that people are the thread through data strategy, it ensures common understanding, collaboration across teams and successful business results.
Accelerate Your Data Strategy with Hexdon Today
Data strategies have many perspectives that the business must consider. Defensive (save costs, prevent customer churn etc.) and Offensive (grow market share, increase customer value etc) is one such example. Walk, Run, Fly is another that helps to phase work-streams in a transformation project. Hexdon brings these to the table and more, to ensure data strategy rigour.
If you would like to talk to us about your data strategy, whether you’re starting from scratch or halfway through building it, reach out to the team at Hexdon. We’d be happy to help.
Daryl at Hexdon delivered great value to Samsung Europe, with passion and a smile.
I highly recommend his expertise and his approach. From data strategy through to analytics and knowledge management solutions, his delivery was people first, resulting in the impact to drive change across the region. Importantly, Daryl spearheaded data innovation with the team across Campaign, Market, Retail, Commercial and Consumer pillars, culminating in Samsung winning DataIQ Awards in 2019 and 2020.
CMO, Samsung Europe
A tremendous supporter and asset to DataIQ across multiple levels.
As an inspirational speaker at our conference, as a commentator, as a judge, and of course as a two-times Winner of the Innovation with Data award, Daryl is clearly in command of his subject area. He is a charismatic figure who wins respect and loyalty. Exactly the type of person it is a dream to be able to showcase through our activities. For those who work with him, it must be even better!
Knowledge & Strategy Director, DataIQ
When it comes to data-driven marketing support, I turn to Hexdon.
Hexdon helped us select the right CRM capability as we set our sights on delivering record growth in the US market. They are a trusted advisor across the data and marketing technology ecosystem and help us stay focused on our team and customers as we deliver business results.
CMO, Because, Animals
Daryl at Hexdon was a pleasure to work with.
He delivered projects that helped to transform data driven marketing and business outcomes at the Retail Groups in which we worked. Daryl led teams focused on delivery of data and business analytics, loyalty, eCommerce, Social and Customer service under my watch. He’s a leader in the field and I trust him to deliver.
CMO, Super Retail Group
We've have had the pleasure of working with Hexdon for years.
From his leading role in driving Samsung Europe’s data analytics evolution through to his transformative consultancy, Hexdon, Daryl’s ability to quickly understand business priorities and to match these with the right technologies and people make him an outstanding talent and one you want on your side.
Managing Director, Horsa
With Hexdon, you get Daryl’s award winning expertise and experience.
I loved having Daryl as part of the Customer & Marketing Analytics team at Samsung Europe. In a complex working environment Daryl showed all the qualities to succeed; calm, intelligent, humorous, committed and resilient.
Director, Samsung Europe
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