Data-driven company and data-driven business culture

There’s a lot of talk about a data-driven culture, and we at Biscuitway, as Growth Consulting, are among the biggest proponents of this approach.

However, I want to ask you a fundamental question: are you sure your company can truly adopt a data-driven culture by embracing data governance, analytics and strategies?

A data-driven company also relies on data to make daily decisions

You start with the assumption that every day you potentially collect all kinds of data and you start to ask yourself, how do I use all this data effectively?

Essentially, there are a myriad of data, both scientific and empirical. Having a data-driven business means consulting it to manage every aspect of the business organization.

So, for data-driven companies, what is commonly called data management is not just a technical aspect, but a real strategic key to the entire business.

Bringing a culture of data to all levels of the company is the right way to make sure you are guided by the numbers to make sound decisions based on objective facts and not your personal feelings. Have a doubt? Check out big data!

What the hell is big data?

I know, we’ve been talking about Big Data and how it is useful for business for years, but then you always find yourself asking: what data? Where do I find it? How much is it?

When talking about big data, people often only think about the volume of data to be accessed, but there are also five other Vs that can help you make the data valuable.

In fact, in 2001, Doug Laney, then Vice President and Service Director of the Meta Group company, described in a report the 3V Model of Big Data: Volume, Velocity and Variety. Today, however, we speak of the 6Vs of Big Data because the previous paradigm has been enriched by two more variables: Veracity, Variability and Value.

A data-driven company will therefore have to look at data against these variables:

  • Volume: capture, process and store even large volumes of data in a scalable way for growing business needs, with data from human and machine sources.
  • Speed: the flow of data is often vast and continuous and requires platforms and capabilities that can not only handle significant volumes, but also manage this flow in real time.
  • Variety: the integration of different data into a manageable structure is the key to a solid big data opportunity.
  • Trueness: being able to identify the relevance and accuracy of data and apply them to the appropriate purposes.
  • Variability: manage and contextualise data in a way that provides structure, even in unpredictable and variable data environments.
  • Value: understand the potential to create revenue or unlock opportunities through your data. This reflects the results you apply to your use of data: if it is not valuable, then why and when do you keep it?

How to Adopt a Data-Driven Business Strategy: Put Data at the Centre of Decision Making

Do you have a data analysis team? Well, if you don’t have one, it’s time to set one up. If you do have one, are the members of that team the only ones who see and analyse that data? And are other departments left out?

It sounds like you need to have a bunch of people to spend their time on this alone: but if you are a start-up can you invest everything in this data analysis? Of course not! But you certainly have to impose this fundamental rule on yourself:

Make data-driven decisions in all departments in order to have a broad view of what is working and what is not.

This is why all companies, even those with different businesses, rely on data in making every decision. But it doesn’t end there, remember:

Align your company culture with all departments to maximise insights. Creating a culture where everyone appreciates how data brings value will ensure that internal/external processes and company culture are aligned with maximising insights.

This process starts with the top management, those people who are supposed to pilot this new process before it is disseminated among the entire staff.

When decision-making is data-driven, company or departmental focus group discussions improve.

How to build a data-driven team

One thing that is extremely necessary is to surround yourself with the right talent.

Build a culture that gives credit to data science and management. A data-driven staff is highly valued in today’s job market and, above all, is able to achieve results faster.

This means that hiring the right workers, especially those who can analyse data, is important. When hiring, always look for candidates who are comfortable with data analysis skills.

Moreover, individuals who by nature embrace data are open to what this methodology can teach them. This is also a very important trait for what are other inputs, such as customer and management feedback, qualitative research and user testing: also fostering a feedback-driven culture and User Satisfaction.

In fact, if data in business decision-making is necessary, it should also be done on the basis of an all-encompassing view of business goals, rather than on the analysis of numbers alone.

If you make decisions based only on numbers and figures, you are neglecting the intuition of your staff members and ignoring the experiences in the field with their successes and/or failures. These types of input are indispensable additions to quantifiable analysis.

It doesn’t end there, once you have chosen the right people the real work begins:

  • Support the professional development and training of your team and remember that the current skills of your employees must always grow.
  • Take note of improvements and always test processes.
  • Everyone must be fully trained on standard procedures and the consequences of not adhering to data security and privacy measures.

The culture of failure in the data-driven approach

Be careful, mistakes can and always will occur. It is unavoidable!

No success is achieved in a vacuum: establishing a culture that makes people feel comfortable to fail is the healthy way to set up a data-driven strategy.

Success is the goal, no doubt, but failure is part of the expectation.

The people inside your company are the greatest assets, but success also depends on the people outside: the customers/users.

When adopting strategies, ensure that they are people-centred (both externally and internally). A data-driven company must be a data-driven company for the benefit of people.

It all comes down to a better customer experience, in relation to using your company’s product, or directly from contact with your employees.

Un caffè può far crescere la tua azienda

Success is within reach. All you need? The right people to help you and the desire to succeed!

A comprehensive growth strategy could be exactly what your company needs to improve turnover, retain customers and enhance your performance.

ACompany Builder as Biscuitway could be the real turning point.

Our strength is the method gained from years of experience. We firmly believe that working closely with companies, becoming part of their team and guiding them step by step through digital processes, is necessary to achieve a quality result that unites all the vertical competences of each department.

This is because awareness is at the heart of innovation: the data-driven approach, the cross-fertilisation of ideas, different experiences and competences across sectors enable new perspectives on projects in their entirety, identifying innovative, alternative, ameliorative paths.

Do you think so too? Have a coffee with us to get to know each other better!

The 3 Components of Digital Transformation

Has your company really begun a Digital Transformation process?

We talked in the previous article about What Digital Transformation is (and what it is not). A little introduction to the topic was necessary, so that starting with this article, we can go into more depth and understand what the 3 components of digital transformation are.

But who is the term Digital Transformation creditable to and when did it originate?

Some sources on the web, claim with fair conviction, that the reference year is the end of 2011 and the attribution seems to go unequivocally to the consulting company CapGemini in collaboration with the MIT Center for Digital Business.

Let’s start with the definition that the researchers of the aforementioned organizations gave and that is still particularly interesting today:

Digital transformation involves the use of technology to radically improve the performance or the reach of businesses.

This definition is particularly interesting to understand how, as usual, in Italy and in most of Europe we haven’t understood a f*** thing!

Indeed, many companies have interpreted the digital transformation process over the years by equipping their employees with mobile devices or simply creating cloud infrastructures to store their files.

It would consequently be very easy for me to say that this is not digital transformation, but let’s try to be concrete. How do we know if we have actually started a digital transformation process and if we are going in the right direction?  

The 3 Components of Digital Transformation

There are three measures and indicators of digital transformation in the recent literature that are commonly referred to as the 3 components of digital transformation:

  1. The processes
  2. The operations
  3. The relation with the customers

Transformation of the processes

Let’s start with the first point. I always have questions when I visit companies where employees still rely on paper, pen and file cabinets. Or in other companies, within which people communicate via email and cell phones. 

A successful digital transformation means implementing entirely new technology and processes. Sending a purchase order via email is not a new process; it’s simply a more modern way of doing something you’ve always done. Automating the submission of a purchase order, on the other hand, is.

It is because it saves time. Because you’ll be able to allocate your employees to other tasks. Because it will improve your business efficiency and customer satisfaction.

Transformation of operations

Let’s move on to the second point, those operations. I once approached a company that had a single supplier, not out of convenience but out of laziness. They called me and told me that the supplier was in trouble and had found themselves unprovided for, having no other business relationship.

What if they had had someone advise them early on that that business strategy was dangerous? What if they had implemented a system that automatically allowed them to track suppliers by individual product? What if they had automatically linked to their pricing list?

First of all, the entrepreneur would not be in trouble, having to resort to a new business contact on which there is no history.

He/she also wouldn’t have wasted time manually searching for other vendors, and let’s always remember: time is money.

Finally, it would have obtained higher margins from automated purchasing from the most convenient supplier at the time.

No more phone calls, wasted time or allocated resources. Automation of processes, certainty of agreements and independence of positioning.

Transformation of user experience

Let’s try to admit that in the first two points, with a dash of courage and a bit of luck in choosing the right consulting agency, it’s relatively easy to notice the impact of a digital transformation on your processes and operations. 

It gets more complicated when it comes to customer experience and satisfaction.

However, digital transformations have a enormously significant impact on how customers interact with your business and how they perceive those interactions. 

For example, have you ever wondered why you buy from Amazon? If you’re answering for the prices, you’re wrong. Amazon has prices today that are on average higher than the average competitor. You buy from Amazon because of the customer satisfaction, especially post-sale, that you have accumulated in the most negative experiences.

What happens, for example, when one of your customers doesn’t receive an order or wants to return it? If you have an automated system, in a few minutes the request will be completed and in a few seconds the final response will be packaged.

If you don’t have it, one of your employees will have to manually respond to the email and after hours will still not have solved the problem definitively, because they will have to wait and sort for example the tracking code.

The advantages of digital transformation for your business

Summarily analyzing the 3 components of Digital Transformation, we can say that embarking on a digital transformation journey offers 4 benefits:

  1. It increases the accuracy
  2. It improves the speed
  3. It reduces costs
  4. It makes your business more efficient

But if that’s the case, you can’t ignore talking about and making measurable RoI (return on investment. This is a step we’ll explore in one of the next articles. Because perhaps it is a representative indicator of how to apply digital transformation and how NOT to apply it.

Aloha!

Digital Transformation: what is it? And… what isn’t it?

A lot of people talk about Digital Transformation, but are we really sure we’ve hit the mark?

I’m going to try to take all the smoke out of your eyes!

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to start this article on Digital Transformation. First of all because it’s the first article of the newborn BiscuitWay blog; secondly because the theme is cool and…. cool things usually need cool words.

Then I realized that the cool stuff is usually done by marketeers, and if I’ve learned one thing over the years it’s that sometimes what comes hardest is getting to the gist of it.

So no secrets to success! No tools that no one told you about! Not even formidable advice that will tell you which book to read (with an invitation to buy it on Amazon and an affiliate link) in order to immediately become the innovator of yourself or your company or…. of your property.

What is not Digital Transformation?

Let’s break the ice! We give a dry answer on what Digital Transformation is NOT. Digital transformation is not a standardized website for a few euros, it’s not even e-commerce, it’s not wow management. It is not at all the opening of your fantastic company page on Facebook or LinkedIn. No, I guarantee you.

The good fortune and bad fortune of the web is that you need to be online, but that is not enough to get customers to find you. And even if they do find you, it is not necessarily helpful to your business, quite the contrary.

What is Digital Transformation?

But let’s try to say what Digital Transformation is. To me, Digital Transformation is a change in vision and approach, to put it coolly, a change of mindset.

Let’s take a practical (and not a polished) example. In Italy about 76% of companies are SMEs (so the whole universe starting from micro enterprises to go to small and medium-sized). But let’s try to imagine the case of a shopkeeper.

One of those who for 20 years raised his shutter, turned on the lights, worked inside a store of 36 square meters and waited patiently for his customers.

Well, today, this man, this hero of modern times (and I’m not kidding!) doesn’t need a website. He needs to open his mind to new paradigms for the growth of his business; someone to help him detect his potential and critical issues; someone to analyze with him what he really needs to reduce costs and increase profits.

So let’s start with some basic concepts. Digital transformation cannot be separated from the concept of innovation. And let’s kick off the first more than honest quotation:

Digital Transformation: Not just doing new things, but also doing old things in new ways
Innovation can be the way. But remember that innovating means not only doing new things, but also doing old ones in a new way. (Javier Goyeneche)

The excellent Javier, as we like to call him in convivial moments, in my opinion has hit the nail on the head. Many have spoken of digital, web and innovation as the Land of Toys and in recent years have also made a lot of money.

But I remember very well what happened to Lucignolo and Pinocchio, just as I know very well what happened to those entrepreneurs who plunged into these processes without criteria.

After the race to innovate, entrepreneurs and professionals terrified by investments with no utility or return have given up and retreated into their traditional shells, as a betrayed lover does.

Digital Transformation and Traditional Channels

After all, traditional channels have always worked, so why abandon them?

That’s exactly the point – you do NOT have to do it. Self-respecting Digital Transformation does not transform anything that is already working well. Digital Transformation only intervenes on what really needs to be optimized or on the creation of new sales and/or distribution channels and/or business process optimization.

But let’s be clear, the Digital Transformation compass must always be held by the entrepreneur or professional. It’s okay to be helped, supported, inducted. It’s not good that he/she suffers it, because it won’t change the famous and cool mindset.

The 4 phases of Digital Transformation

So really, how can we categorize a company’s digital transformation? I would say in 4 steps:

  1. Accurate analysis of the company’s history, its target market, its positioning, organizational characteristics, buyer personas, current sales and/or distribution channels;
  2. Identification of unexpressed potential, critical issues, emerging opportunities
  3. Planning of action areas with realistic RoI (return on investment) targets
  4. Execution, i.e. the realization of what was designed

In this introductory article to the topic, I made the effort to break down transformation from digital. In the next articles, I will recompose it by explaining why digital tools cannot be ignored today.

Aloha!