Build operational resilience by driving visibility over meaningful data
In the final insights piece of our series, Leading for a changed future – what are your ‘AHA’ moments, we explore the critical nature of data in ensuring ideal business outcomes. How can leaders build their operational resilience by driving visibility over meaningful metrics? Find out more.
Data is the cornerstone of future business success. It is the new gold, the new oil. In a changed world, data will be the most critical success factor of performance and an organisation’s ability to build operational resilience.
As we shift into the next phase of the ongoing crisis, leaders face monumental decisions amidst a significant management transformation, exploring the new elastic workforce, considering increasingly complex compliance obligations and helping their teams adapt to the future. Data will play a pivotal role in supporting leaders through these make or break choices. But an overwhelming amount of data or poorly managed analysis can be damaging to a company’s ability to simultaneously manage the crisis, support day-to-day operations and build agility for the future.
The data gap
A Deloitte study found that 49 per cent of leaders acknowledge data’s importance in enabling better decisions, while 16 per cent find it essential for adapting strategies and a further 10 per cent use it in improving relationships with partners and customers. And data does have significant value for businesses. It’s critical for making decisions and problem-solving around performance, outdated processes and changing consumer and client needs, the core parts of any business model.
Most leaders see the value in leveraging data in decision-making but aren’t able to tap into it as their systems are not set up to provide the right insights. Especially in post-crisis world, technology will lead the way in enabling change and leaders must invest now in ensuring data is accurate, timely, comprehensive, efficient and accessible.
Navigating a changed world
The digital future brings with it unique challenges unlike any leaders have faced before. The solution is to enable a Single Source of Truth, a comprehensive source consolidating all critical metrics under a singular view so leaders can quickly base decisions around comparative data. Northern Trust recently demonstrated the success of their data management strategy during the crisis, tapping into tailored dashboards that allow them to shift capacity across teams instantly with the right information on not just workloads, but attached skills and profiles. The organisation was able to address reduced outsourced support with efficiently shifting capacity amongst their onshore teams and analyse productivity to actually grow their output and meet a rising demand for their services.
Pete Cherecwich President of Asset Servicing, commented on the realisation brought about by the data, noting that “every crisis forces people to ask themselves whether they really need a function to be performed within their office, or whether they can have someone else do it for them.”
So, how can leaders use data to establish their position in the new world and build sustainable businesses? Here are five ways a Single Source of Truth can help power your future:
1. Enable productivity and quality
Improving data quality ensures more accurate analysis of productivity to reduce wasted effort and idle capacity and automate error-prone tasks. While leaders should be careful not to intrude on employees’ privacy, this can help provide useful suggestions on efficiently allocating resources.
2. Drive a stronger customer experience
Especially in a world post-crisis, the customer’s need is evolving rapidly, and touchpoints are increasingly digital. Leaders will need meaningful insights to predict and form the new customer journey, keep them engaged and provide a tailored experience to stay relevant in a changed future.
3. Ensure an engaged workplace culture
In the new remote world, leaders must work to engage employees and maintain the social fabric of the organizational culture. Looking at the data around their performance can indicate their motivation in the role and environment and measuring that against new leadership changes and company policies being implemented will highlight what suits the workforce best.
4. Manage risks and meet compliance obligations
Automated information consolidation is critical in getting ahead of evolving regulatory demands and increased security risks in the remote environment. From early detection of new risks to breaking down analytics for various stakeholders, a Single Source of Truth will help mitigate damage rapidly and efficiently.
5. Keeping up with the rate of change
Leaders that tap into the potential of data now will be leagues ahead in keeping pace with innovation in their industries, as whole sectors are redefined by digital disruption. Data can help businesses reduce testing time in bringing new services or products to market and keep an eye on the changing demands in virtually real-time.
To build resilience in a new and still uncertain world, leaders must scale their innovation efforts to meet unprecedented market shifts and this can only be done with the real-time access and a comprehensive view of data.
Investing in a Single Source of Truth ensures all elements of the business, from employee management to customer experience, can work cohesively, powered by cross-functional insights.
Get a clearer view of your data. To explore how Enlighten can help, reach out to one of our executives, Helen Mackay, at helen.mackay@enlighten-opex.com for a virtual coffee chat.
