The acceleration of digital transformation projects over the last year not only drove an intense focus on data and analytics to provide much-needed needed insight, but also highlighted another potentially harmful effect – the ineffective use of data
Abboud Ghanem, regional vice president – Middle East & Africa, Alteryx
It’s no secret that this year has been challenging for businesses across the UAE as they seek to adopt new models that put them in a position to succeed and continue operations during and beyond this unprecedented public health crisis. With the pandemic amplifying the shortcomings of countless businesses, it has also served as the wake-up call many business leaders needed to realise the importance of proactive versus reactive preparation.
Although they are now more ‘data-aware’ and transforming processes, many wish they had embraced data analytics sooner. According to IDC CIO Perspective Covid Impact Survey held in quarter two of 2020, 53 percent of CIO’s are accelerating digital transformation efforts even more to meet new customer and operations agility needs and 23 percent CIOs are willing to invest in technologies such as Data Analytics that will enable their organisations to understand their customers’ better.
The acceleration of digital transformation projects over the last year not only drove an intense focus on data and analytics to provide much-needed needed insight, but also highlighted another potentially harmful effect – the ineffective use of data. According to McKinsey Global Survey, 8 out of 10 organisations have undertaken the efforts but fewer than one-third of organisational transformations succeed at improving a company’s performance and sustaining those gains, the latest results find that the success rate of digital transformations is even lower.
Separating the haves from the have nots in terms of digital readiness and creating the emergence of an “analytic divide, where companies with access to analytics and automation skills are leaving those who lack those capabilities behind. For many, models, dashboards and data resources only started to surface after it was too late—when they were in a position of reacting instead of predicting.
Researchers from the London School of Economics identified four scenarios for crisis-response chosen by organisations over downturns – sweat the assets, underpin today’s business, slow the strategy and, adapt strategy and build resilience. Highlighting that in 2020 more organisations were taking emergency measures (sweat the assets) while still buying more technology to automate and digitise the existing operating models than during previous economic crises.
In turbulent times, good information, good data and the capacity to derive good decisions with analytics are more critical than ever. Business leaders need to fully embrace data and analytics while also putting the right people, processes and technologies in place to improve current processes and, as a result, customer experience. Companies that aren’t democratising data, maximising its value or upskilling their people to perform transformative analysis will struggle to meet crucial business goals during the pandemic and even in a post-Covid world. Without a doubt, the winners and losers in any industry will continue to be defined by those that are leveraging analytics and those that are not.
The past year saw customers move online in unprecedented numbers, those businesses with little to no virtual presence had to adapt quickly. Yet, today’s customers expect more than a functioning website. It is essential to deliver an unmatched, personalised customer experience digitally. Being data-driven is central to this.
While successful digital players like Amazon and Netflix continue to distinguish themselves from competitors by using data analytics and automation to make accurate predictions about customer demands, others are still standing on the precipice of how to extract value from data to transform. Now more than ever businesses need to anticipate changing customer needs, strengthen supplier networks, and be on top of logistics in order to respond quickly in a crisis.
Amazon and Netflix continue to distinguish themselves from competitors by using data analytics and automation to make accurate predictions about customer demands
The challenge is turning the growing volumes of information and data available to them into actionable insights, to optimise performance and control risk. For humans, relying on legacy spreadsheets never built for large-scale data analysis, bringing data assets to life in order to provide the actionable and critical business insights that drives process change through better data-driven decisions, it is a huge job.
Digital-first enterprises are now one of the emerging themes in conversations we are having with our customers. The stumbling block for many is how, exactly, is it possible to become completely digital-first without a strong army of fully trained data scientists? To achieve this involves bringing everyone in the company along on the journey by democratising data, providing access to one centralised platform, and amplifying human intelligence through self-service platforms so anyone can solve complex data science challenges.
It’s those closest to a process who know where the problems are and can harvest business critical insights to drive change. Employees must have access to the valuable data needed and be empowered to ask business-relevant questions and obtain swift answers without relying on highly trained data professionals – quickly making informed decisions that benefit the bottom line.
If workers have the right technologies that are easy to use, combined with access to the data, magic can happen.
Data-driven insights fuelled by analytics can serve as a stabiliser for businesses. Post pandemic, the power of data-insights will be crucial in the years ahead as data-centric organisations continually search for new ways to improve.
Most importantly, only by infusing data into the entire organisational ecosystem, upskilling people to accelerate business outcomes and automating analytic processes through building well-integrated, outcome-first analytics initiatives will organisations stay resilient in a rapidly changing environment.
As more firms see the benefits of effectively embedding data-driven decision making and process automation, data democratisation and building a culture of analytics will grow in importance.
Abboud Ghanem, regional vice president – Middle East & Africa, Alteryx.
Follow us on
For all the latest business news from the UAE and Gulf countries, follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn, like us on Facebook and subscribe to our YouTube page, which is updated daily.
by Staff Writer
More of this topic
Why a post-Covid recovery will be data-driven
The acceleration of digital transformation projects over the last year not only drove an intense focus on data and analytics to provide much-needed needed insight, but also highlighted another potentially harmful effect – the ineffective use of data
Abboud Ghanem, regional vice president – Middle East & Africa, Alteryx
It’s no secret that this year has been challenging for businesses across the UAE as they seek to adopt new models that put them in a position to succeed and continue operations during and beyond this unprecedented public health crisis. With the pandemic amplifying the shortcomings of countless businesses, it has also served as the wake-up call many business leaders needed to realise the importance of proactive versus reactive preparation.
Although they are now more ‘data-aware’ and transforming processes, many wish they had embraced data analytics sooner. According to IDC CIO Perspective Covid Impact Survey held in quarter two of 2020, 53 percent of CIO’s are accelerating digital transformation efforts even more to meet new customer and operations agility needs and 23 percent CIOs are willing to invest in technologies such as Data Analytics that will enable their organisations to understand their customers’ better.
The acceleration of digital transformation projects over the last year not only drove an intense focus on data and analytics to provide much-needed needed insight, but also highlighted another potentially harmful effect – the ineffective use of data. According to McKinsey Global Survey, 8 out of 10 organisations have undertaken the efforts but fewer than one-third of organisational transformations succeed at improving a company’s performance and sustaining those gains, the latest results find that the success rate of digital transformations is even lower.
Separating the haves from the have nots in terms of digital readiness and creating the emergence of an “analytic divide, where companies with access to analytics and automation skills are leaving those who lack those capabilities behind. For many, models, dashboards and data resources only started to surface after it was too late—when they were in a position of reacting instead of predicting.
Researchers from the London School of Economics identified four scenarios for crisis-response chosen by organisations over downturns – sweat the assets, underpin today’s business, slow the strategy and, adapt strategy and build resilience. Highlighting that in 2020 more organisations were taking emergency measures (sweat the assets) while still buying more technology to automate and digitise the existing operating models than during previous economic crises.
In turbulent times, good information, good data and the capacity to derive good decisions with analytics are more critical than ever. Business leaders need to fully embrace data and analytics while also putting the right people, processes and technologies in place to improve current processes and, as a result, customer experience. Companies that aren’t democratising data, maximising its value or upskilling their people to perform transformative analysis will struggle to meet crucial business goals during the pandemic and even in a post-Covid world. Without a doubt, the winners and losers in any industry will continue to be defined by those that are leveraging analytics and those that are not.
The past year saw customers move online in unprecedented numbers, those businesses with little to no virtual presence had to adapt quickly. Yet, today’s customers expect more than a functioning website. It is essential to deliver an unmatched, personalised customer experience digitally. Being data-driven is central to this.
While successful digital players like Amazon and Netflix continue to distinguish themselves from competitors by using data analytics and automation to make accurate predictions about customer demands, others are still standing on the precipice of how to extract value from data to transform. Now more than ever businesses need to anticipate changing customer needs, strengthen supplier networks, and be on top of logistics in order to respond quickly in a crisis.
The challenge is turning the growing volumes of information and data available to them into actionable insights, to optimise performance and control risk. For humans, relying on legacy spreadsheets never built for large-scale data analysis, bringing data assets to life in order to provide the actionable and critical business insights that drives process change through better data-driven decisions, it is a huge job.
Digital-first enterprises are now one of the emerging themes in conversations we are having with our customers. The stumbling block for many is how, exactly, is it possible to become completely digital-first without a strong army of fully trained data scientists? To achieve this involves bringing everyone in the company along on the journey by democratising data, providing access to one centralised platform, and amplifying human intelligence through self-service platforms so anyone can solve complex data science challenges.
It’s those closest to a process who know where the problems are and can harvest business critical insights to drive change. Employees must have access to the valuable data needed and be empowered to ask business-relevant questions and obtain swift answers without relying on highly trained data professionals – quickly making informed decisions that benefit the bottom line.
If workers have the right technologies that are easy to use, combined with access to the data, magic can happen.
Data-driven insights fuelled by analytics can serve as a stabiliser for businesses. Post pandemic, the power of data-insights will be crucial in the years ahead as data-centric organisations continually search for new ways to improve.
Most importantly, only by infusing data into the entire organisational ecosystem, upskilling people to accelerate business outcomes and automating analytic processes through building well-integrated, outcome-first analytics initiatives will organisations stay resilient in a rapidly changing environment.
As more firms see the benefits of effectively embedding data-driven decision making and process automation, data democratisation and building a culture of analytics will grow in importance.
Abboud Ghanem, regional vice president – Middle East & Africa, Alteryx.
Follow us on
Latest News