Driving value with big data

Data is, quite literally, big business. The global big data and analytics market is worth $274 billion, according to SiliconANGLE. And even back in 2016, IBM estimated that the amount of data produced daily around the world was 2.5 quintillion bytes (1 quintillion = a billion billions).

We’re seeing a growing number of businesses investing heavily in data and data analytics, keen to capture some of that inherent value. But you can only create competitive advantage if you use data effectively, and McKinsey reports that only 8% of organisations successfully scale analytics to get value from their data.

So how can you translate big data into genuine value for your business?

Here’s our step-by-step guide to creating business value with analytics:

1. Establish your data sources

Before you can harness the value in your data, you need to know what you’re working with. What data does your business generate? Where is it coming from? Is your data spread across disparate applications and stored in different locations? Your data is one of your greatest business assets so it’s crucial to collect and collate it accurately and store it securely. Even small businesses tend to generate huge amounts of data, and it has to sit somewhere that’s centrally accessible so it can be processed and analysed.

We have considerable experience extracting data from a myriad of data sources across enterprises large and small. And we can help develop and execute a tailored data management strategy for your business, ensuring data is stored securely and available for day-to-day operations, data governance, data analytics and business intelligence.

We also provide mentoring, coaching and training in all areas of databases and business intelligence, helping you to build your skills and confidence and giving you the tools to design, implement, support and unlock the value from business intelligence solutions.

1. Implement a data strategy

To create business value with analytics, you need reliable insight, based on reliable data - it’s essential to combine data to give you a single source of truth. We can help you create and implement an enterprise-wide business intelligence solution that’s tailored to your organisation and requirements. Full data strategy typically covers data governance, data management, data architecture and business intelligence. We can help you build a data strategy that works for you, and define a data analytics and business intelligence roadmap that delivers a single source of truth, and a reliable, trustworthy 360-degree view of your business data.

1. Democratise your data

This isn’t just about giving everyone in your business physical access to data, and establishing self-service analytics - it’s about educating, empowering and enabling the people responsible for solving business problems. It's about data literacy, ensuring they can make effective decisions with the data. When data is truly democratised, everyone can gather and analyse data independently - regardless of technical ability. It’s about helping everyone in your business to work with data comfortably, and this should be an ongoing process not ‘one and done’. We can help you achieve this - we’re experts in Power BI, which is a fantastically valuable tool for data democratisation. Get in touch to discuss, or take a look at our Power BI training courses.

1. Prioritise data-driven decision making

Once everyone in your organisation has access to - and is confident working with - data, you automatically unlock greater value because every individual is empowered to make data-driven decisions. Data gives you valuable insight into the business historically, which can help to reduce future risk and identify fresh opportunities for creating value. By accessing growing amounts of data, and relating more data points, you can quickly unearth valuable connections. This leads to actionable insights and more accurate measurement of return on investment (ROI).

We’re experts in bringing data to life through data-driven decision making, and giving businesses the tools and training to DIY. Our BI consultants can help you develop a business intelligence roadmap, with solutions built around Microsoft Azure and Power BI. And we run several training courses on data-driven decision making

How we can help you

The PTR team has been designing, developing and implementing effective business intelligence solutions since the 1980s. We want to help you drive your business forward and we’re here to guide you through your data journey.

Get in touch to discuss your business and how we can help you create value through analytics.