In 1958, a 28-year-old Steve McQueen played his character in the movie “The Blob”, an independent production. It tells the story of a species of giant gum that grows as it kills its victims. Realizing the danger, the young man goes to the authorities to call attention that something is wrong, but no one gives him credit. We will return to the movie later, but the story of this deformed mass that grows larger day after day in a terrifying way has a lot to do with… Data.
When companies are small and start their challenges in the market, it is normal for the amount of available data to be managed with some ease. The departments are close together, the number of people still allows them to have lunch together at the same restaurant and Microsoft Office is an acceptable solution for most operations.
With the growth of the company, it is normal for managers to worry about hiring, increasing physical space, acquiring more IT equipment and even other means of communication. Plants expand, suppliers double, markets broaden horizons and the need arises to create a Customer Support Service. Bureaucracy, photocopies and documents (sometimes on paper, sometimes in digital form) increase. Diversity causes productivity software to multiply and data to be recorded on different platforms. Then comes data in the cloud, CRM tools or other more or less complex systems.
But amidst all this growth, there is something that is quietly evolving at a pace more overwhelming than anything else that has been talked about: data. When managers realize it, they will have a “Blob” in their company that, sooner or later, will relentlessly limit their competitiveness. And the size of these modern “Blobs” would put the 1958 movie to shame in an epic way.
When companies are incorporated, the following aspects begin to be thought of: a structure for their human resources; an accounting to record funds; a marketing structure to design the brand and a guiding management structure. But a data-driven and customer-focused strategy is never thought of. However, this is extremely dangerous.
Here are some situations that are a direct consequence of an anarchic exponential growth of data:
- It will be increasingly difficult to find the data needed to make correct and timely decisions;
- The interpretation of data will be increasingly subjective, leading to communication difficulties and decisions not supported by data: in the end, each department recorded the data “in its own way”;
- Data quality will decrease abruptly over time as there will be more and more missing information and information recorded in a different way (ex: in HR the location is registered as “Lisboa”; in Marketing as “LX” );
- More and more outdated data will appear: with so many non-centralized registration systems, it will be recurrent to find situations in which information updated on platform A is not updated on platform B;
- Data integration on a single platform will be more complicated as there are thousands of different formats to record the same information (e.g. Excel, CSV…);
- Computer programs that used to be used perfectly to manage information are now not enough. Even spreadsheets are limited;
- With data of such poor quality, something paradoxical happens: the company has an enormous amount of data at its disposal… But it cannot work with it or take value from it. Without quality, clean and well-organized data, it is almost impossible to carry out more advanced analytics (e.g. predictive and prescriptive analytics).
When all these consequences arise, the challenge for companies to remain competitive and sustainable increases substantially. Managers, in their wish to make more relevant and accurate decisions, will hire data analysts to find answers. But then a new paradox will emerge: 80% of the analysts’ time will be spent cleaning, preparing and combining the data and only 20% will be left for their analysis. In other words, when managers need the support of data the most, it will be when they will least have it.
Moral of the story?
Don’t let data in your business grow unchecked. Don’t do as the authorities in the movie “The Blob”, not giving it any credit. Put your company’s data strategy as a priority from the start.
In the picture, you can find circles that present different moments in which a company specializing in data and Artificial Intelligence can enter the scene. The later this entry takes place, the more time and money it takes to save the situation. The more data your company has, the greater the effort to organize, manage and extract value.
A company with an integrated data system, good storage practices and quality data will always be one step ahead. It will extract value from data in an efficient and sustainable way. Intelligent Algorithms can be an excellent partner in this matter: we help companies to be data-driven and to develop, from scratch, a culture oriented towards the correct management of data.
Intelligent Algorithms
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