It’s generally accepted that data is a core business asset. Yet, there’s a multitude of data challenges that stand in the way of managing, using and benefiting from this precious commodity. How many of these situations look familiar to you and your organisation?

The volume of data being created is growing exponentially across all functions making it difficult to determine what data to collect and maintain. Too much data will overwhelm and blind a business in the same way that too little data provides vague direction of what to do.

Once organisations have decided on the type and volume of data they need, the next challenge is ensuring it’s of a consistently high quality. The GIGO acronym (garbage in, garbage out) is particularly apt here. You may have mountains of data but if it’s inaccurate you merely have mountains of rubbish. And zero trust in using it.

Next in this horror show list of data challenges is how to organise it. Data terms need to be agreed and standardised across the business otherwise there will always be the complaint of ‘we’re comparing apples with oranges’.

Assuming a business has a ready supply of good quality, standardised data the next issue is where to store it. Data is often scattered across a business, held in disparate silos and underutilised. Aristotle’s well known phrase ‘the sum of the whole is greater than the sum of the parts’ springs to mind. Data is much more powerful when its joined up. But, how to do this? In the cloud, on premise, in a data warehouse or a data lake? There are many options – definitely not a ‘one size fits all’ approach.

Then there’s the challenge of integrating different systems so that data can flow seamlessly throughout the organisation to reach those who need to use it. What’s the point of data if nobody can access it?

Finally, there’s the issue of deriving benefits from data. In its raw format data is not particularly useful, except to those with technical expertise. Data needs to be transformed into information and insights so that non-specialists can take advantage of the workflow efficiencies and decision making power provided by this precious commodity.

This list of data challenges may seem daunting, but with a data strategy that’s aligned to a company’s business objectives, they are easily surmountable. For details on how to do this look out for our data strategy article – it’s due out shortly.

Please get in touch if you’d like to discuss your own data challenges and how to resolve them. It’s what we’re good at!