Thinking

Is your big data causing problems?

Written by Mick Murphy | May 21 2015

The rapid growth of digital information continues to throw up some major challenges for businesses both large and small.

Companies nowadays pull in an enormous amount of customer information from a wide variety of sources, including social channels, face-to-face interactions, and a host of devices such as tablets, smartphones and laptops.

The sheer volume and variety of this information dictates that companies must act smarter in their approach to managing and making sense of their data. Failure to do so means you’re probably storing up big problems as well as big data.

A well-designed data governance programme can help you avert disaster, by protecting, safeguarding, and ensuring the long-term value of all your data assets. It can help improve your business operations through more informed decision-making, precision-targeting of products and services, as well as optimised communications and promotions to achieve maximum returns.

Here at Clarasys, our team has responded to this increasingly urgent challenge by launching a new service, designed to review your data processes and systems, identify issues and their root causes, and to provide you with a roadmap outlining improvements that can be made.

At the analysis stage, our data management experts will look to involve all your data stakeholders to encourage a sense of ownership and collective responsibility. This, in our experience, promotes a more stringent attitude throughout the business and helps to formalise data stewardship arrangements. It’s important that people appreciate the importance of such large amounts of data and the delicate handling that is required.

We’ll concentrate our immediate efforts on your processes rather than systems – our experience has taught us that these and not your software are the most likely causes of your data management problems.

We can help you to set out standards and formalise procedures, designed to reduce human error and the occurrence of data anomalies in your systems. Another positive outcome might be an improved Net Promoter Score, through a better understanding of your customers.

Our team of data governance specialists can help you to:

  • Save money through a reduction in debtor days
  • Make business decisions with knowledge and confidence
  • Improve the security of your valuable information
  • Maximise sales opportunities
  • Reduce data anomalies in your systems
  • Minimise the scope for human error, such as duplication and discrepancies
  • Improve staff efficiency and effectiveness
  • Ensure robust invoicing

Because we work in accordance with Agile principles, our work is based on learning from many iterations of a process to ensure improved outcomes. We use this methodology in our analysis and incorporate the principles into your roadmap, allowing you to capitalise quickly on efforts by performing the tasks with least effort but maximum returns first.

Your initial consultation is free and allows us to plan your project in depth, with a detailed agreement on your scope and objectives, before our consultants immerse themselves with your teams.

The average project involves around 40 interviews with key stakeholders, as well as two full day workshops to map your most common lead-to-cash processes. The roadmap option involves a business case and an iterative business plan that includes costs, outlines any risks or issues and is fully prioritised based on effort against value.