This is the year of cost cuts, massive layoffs, and tightened budgets. Why then are we advocating a digital transformation in a tumultuous time? Simply because the stakes are high. For businesses that want to ride this wave of uncertainty and walk out victorious, now is the time to double down on data, customer relationships, and on true transformation.
But let us be clear – digital transformation is not about new technologies, new systems, new hirings, or new infrastructure. In the words of Scott Taylor, The Data Whisperer, and our speaker of the episode, digital transformation is ‘providing value to your relationships through your brands at scale.’ True transformation, therefore, isn’t about technology, it’s about people, relationships, and building a culture of data-informed workplaces.
Related: Read about how design thinking is tied to digital transformation in a DataSpeak webinar with Bill Schmarzo, the Dean of Big Data.
Introducing Scott Taylor, Our Speaker of the Month
Scott Taylor, The Data Whisperer, has helped countless companies by enlightening business executives to the strategic value of proper data management. He focuses on business alignment and the “strategic WHY” rather than system implementation and the “technical HOW.” As Principal Consultant for MetaMeta Consulting, he helps enterprises and tech brands tell their data story.
An avid business evangelist and original thinker, he continually shares his passion for the strategic value of master data through industry events, public speaking opportunities, blogs, videos, whitepapers, podcasts, cartoons, puppets shows, and all forms of thought leadership.
Scott has also launched a new book, ‘TELLING YOUR DATA STORY: Data Storytelling for Data Management,’ a practical guide to explaining and understanding the strategic value of data management.
In an hour-long webinar, Scott touches on many critical points – from defining digital transformation to emphasizing on the importance of data story-telling, from being relationship-centric to ensuring quality data at the heart of transformation initiatives.
Here are some note-worthy snippets from the webinar.
What is Data Storytelling in data management?
Data Storytelling is probably the hottest non-technical trend in the technology-related space. The most common understanding and application of data storytelling are in analytics where you’re using the data to create insights, drive a business action, and so on.
Scott Taylor takes data storytelling in another direction and applies it to data management – a technical topic that hardly ever makes for a discussion at the leadership level. CEOs, CMOs, CIOs are usually more inclined toward insights, actions, and analytics than they are toward the nitty-gritty of data management.
And that’s where Scott attempts to change the narrative.
We all have stories of how data is used, but we don’t have stories of how data is made. This essentially means defining our data management at a strategic level, using business-accessible vocabulary that can get the message across to our stakeholders.
Why is that important?
Because data Leaders must create a compelling narrative to evangelize their data management programs and secure long-term support from enterprise stakeholders and business leadership. Data management leaders who seek to improve soft skills and execute simple storytelling techniques will be more likely to gain a rightful place for their initiatives on their organization’s strategic plan.
Data story in digital transformation and data management attempts to answer questions like:
- Why are you here?
- Why is this important?
- Why are we planning these transformations?
These questions are particularly important at the time of creating master records because it’s important to understand the business problem or the business goal before creating an MDM plan. Without answering key questions, or having a story about how your data is made, you will be far from reaping the benefits of master data management.
Embracing Data and Digital Transformation
According to a PWC report, 60% of executives believe that digital transformation will be critical to growth in 2022, but what exactly is digital transformation?
Scott Taylor says that digital transformation means a lot of different things to different people but one thing it means to everyone and to every organization is that you’ll have more data than you’ve ever had before, and you’ll need new ways to manage it that you never thought of before, to do things you never imagined before!
Frankly, the need for data management is everywhere across your company. The value of every digitally transformative customer-facing initiative, every data science and analytics-based project, every as-a-service offering, every foray into e-commerce, and every enterprise software implementation, is inextricably linked to the successful output of data management efforts. Wherever there is technology, there is data, and if there is data, you got to have the means to manage it well so it can serve your business.
Scott categorizes the value of data into five buckets:
- Growth (increase sales),
- Improve (operational efficiency),
- Protect (mitigating risks),
- Sustain (try and be more sustainable) and
- Scale (providing value on a larger level)
And master data is the accelerant for a business, enabling the achievements of these goals.
Using Data Management to Become a relationship-Centric Business
Scott Taylor strongly emphasizes for companies to be relationship-centric enterprises. They need to provide value to their relationships (customers, consumers, clients, stakeholders etc) through their services, but this cannot happen if businesses don’t have quality data to rely on!
There are plenty of real-world examples where poor data has resulted in millions of penalties, angry customers, sanction violations and a plethora of other problems.
To keep it simple, if businesses want to futuristic, they need to become reliable brands. Think how much trust a bank can lose with a data breach, or how a violation of GDPR rules can destroy credibility (plus fines and legitation fees). The real-world consequences of poor data management is real and businesses are in a tight time crunch to improve processes while also focusing on growth.
How to Start with Data & Digital Transformation?
Contrary to popular belief, data and digital transformation doesn’t have to be a million-dollar investment. You can start small and agile with trials and POC’s and invest in partnerships with experts and try new technology. You can focus on improving data quality, or launching data literacy training programs within the organization. You can begin by asking critical questions on the state of data and insights in your organization.
McKinsey suggests these five focus points:
- Laying out clear priorities
- Investing in talent especially at the top with strong digital and analytics capabilities
- Committing time and money
- Embracing agility
- Empowering people
Additionally, these five factors are critical for transformation.
- Having the right, digital-savvy leaders in place
- Building capabilities for the workforce of the future
- Empowering people to work in new ways
- Giving day-to-day tools a digital upgrade
- Communicating frequently via traditional and digital methods
Scott Taylor suggests:
- Double down on data, digital, and data management, whatever that means for your business.
- Tell a better story, about your business.
- Embrace the advice from industry experts.
- Be willing to learn and to embrace data and transformation.
- Start with proper data management, become a relationship-centric enterprise.
- Start small and agile with trials and POC’s and invest in partnerships with experts and try new technology.
We’ve put together a breakdown PDF that you can share with your leadership team & stakeholders to kickstart your digital transformation initiatives.
How Can WinPure Help in data & Digital Transformation?
WinPure provides two kinds of solutions – a data quality solution and a master data management solution. With our data quality solution, we help businesses of all sizes to clean, match, merge, dedupe and create reliable master records without any knowledge of maths, codes, or statistics required. WinPure is a true no-code solution that has been globally recognized for its ease-of-use and highest accuracy data match in the industry.
Read our G2 reviews and see how customers have benefitted from our solution.
Our master data management solution is also designed for businesses of all sizes to easily clean, manage, and create reliable master data within just weeks.
Check out this video to learn about our MDM solution.
Ok, so all this is great, but how do we *actually* help with transformation?
1). We offer an affordable solution that businesses of all sizes can try before purchasing. WinPure has a transparent pricing plan and offers free demos that allows users to judge whether the tool fits the intended purpose of use.
2). Our solutions team is focused on helping a customer solve a critical data problem. We offer free consultancy to discover your challenges and the best way they can be resolved.
3). You don’t need a steep learning curve to use WinPure. It’s as easy as counting 1-2-3. With a point-and-click interface and pre-defined rules, all you need to do is plug in your data and start fixing problems.
4). With WinPure, you can prepare data, profile data, clean data, match and merge data, enrich data, and even perform address verification all within one platform, one interface.
5). Because we get how data and digital transformation is one hell of a challenge and your technology of choice *must* reduce dependencies on human effort, save time, and help you deliver on business outcomes.
Want to know more? Feel free to get in touch with us and see how we can help!
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