Data insight drives business transformation

Data insight drives business transformation.

A decade ago, when I first began recruiting in the data space in earnest, the primary focus was data insights.

In other words, most of the companies I dealt with were focussed on BI and MI development.

That changed very rapidly and for two main reasons. Firstly, the business of visualising and analysing data quickly became more user driven thanks to tools like Tableau. But secondly, the very act of trying to get insights from data exposes the flaws in the data.

If the underlying data is rubbish, so are the insights you gain from it. But still – data insight drives business transformation, so that is a problem that needs resolving.

So companies began to focus much more heavily on data governance and quality, and that activity was reinforced by closer attention from regulators, culminating in the implementation of GDPR.

All that means that over the past 10 years companies have spent a lot of time and money curating and thinking about their data.

And now they’re looking to use it. 

Data is a fascinating area to recruit in because it is almost the epitome of the overlap between technology and business. If you know how to build a data warehouse but have no understanding of what the data is or what the business might do with it, your solution may be elegant but it will likely be useless. On the other hand if you know what you’ve got and what you want to know but you have no technical capability, you’re stuck.

So the demand for people with strong functional business knowhow and deep technical understanding of data is high.

And more so today than ever; because that combination of skills is exactly what numerous CDO’s I’ve been speaking to are looking for to help them drive new opportunity, process improvement and better integration across their companies.

Many companies are planning transformations of one kind or another at the moment . Whether driven by Covid, or Brexit, or regulatory requirements or something else. And data insights will inform a good proportion of those projects.

In one sense we’re back where we started; companies know the data has a story to tell them and they want to hear it.

Because data insight drives business transformation!

I’ve been in the data world for 10 years. But I’ve spent longer still working with companies to hire candidates who have both technical capability and business knowledge. They’re hard to find and tricky to hire but they are the secret sauce when it comes to harnessing the power of technology to transform companies.

I can demonstrate the work I’ve done with case studies and references. I have a hugely valuable network of experts with deep data capability and business transformation skills. Every one of them is unique, just as every one of the situations they face is unique. Some are permanent people, looking for the opportunity to own something in the long term. Some are interims, driving change and acting as external advisors. All are worth their weight in gold.

If you work in that space and would like to talk – or if you want help in finding the right people to get your transformation off the ground – do get in touch. I’d love to talk to you.

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