Data is a powerful asset for businesses, providing valuable insights into customer behavior, trends, and potential challenges. Analysis of historical data can reveal patterns or trends that may indicate future issues, as well as successful remediation measures. Understanding your customers is essential for growth, and data can play a role in almost every aspect of the way you interact with them. For example, tracking the results of website traffic and social media campaigns will give you an idea of how your target audience responds to your messages.
With quality data on your side, you'll be more confident in making business decisions and more agile. A PwC survey of 1,000 business executives found that data-driven organizations were three times more likely to experience significant improvements in their decision-making capabilities. This has a direct impact on the bottom line: more than three percent of an average company's profits are at risk due to poor operational decision-making. To make the most of data and ensure it contributes to effective operational management, companies must understand the tools at their disposal and implement best practices. This includes setting goals to speed up the collection and storage of data, while also performing periodic checks to ensure accuracy. Data management systems are essential for managing large amounts of data and making it easily accessible for use.
Additionally, data management plans should be useful for business operations and auditable in a way that easily demonstrates compliance. Data management helps minimize potential errors by establishing usage processes and policies and building trust in the data used to make decisions throughout the organization. IT operational data is important as part of the IT planning process for understanding capacity utilization and determining where there are scalability restrictions, as well as for understanding the cost of services provided to users and evaluating the security and risk considerations of the business technology ecosystem. The use of IT services and performance data from manual processes help leaders identify where additional investment in automation can help the organization scale. Todd Wright, director of data management solutions at SAS, notes that companies have realized that all this data can provide a lot of new information about customer buying behavior and the dynamics of their industry - but only if it is managed and trusted. IT operational data refers to the content of “what technological components work and are used”. By understanding these tools and implementing best practices, companies can take advantage of the benefits that come with using data for effective operational management.