As I write this from my deck at home, the sky is mostly clear and the temperature is racing toward the upper 70s – the kind of day where it’s easy to picture yourself at the ballpark watching the boys of summer. Throughout the game, the scoreboard continually presents updated, real-time, and accurate information, not only on the game you are watching but every other game in the league that day. You leave the game and turn on the radio in your car and you hear the run-down on games through out the league. You arrive at home and log on to the internet and you see the scores for the day and the impact of the players’ performances on your own fantasy baseball team. Your daily paper the next morning has complete box scores on the games from the previous day.
Think about the data management practices behind the scenes. Major League Baseball has many sources of data, namely each ballpark, gathering data as events occur. That data and the many metrics calculated from it are collected and disseminated literally around the world in near real-time. The information is then presented to everyone who requests it when and where they want it. And what’s more, the validity and accuracy of the data is never questioned regardless of who receives it, when they receive it, and the medium through which they receive it. How many businesses can say that about their data management practices?
Many companies are quite the opposite, investing heavily each year to maintain highly fragmented, non-integrated operational and financial systems (silos of information). This indicates much work remains to simplify and standardize data across these organizations.
Conversely, managing data as a strategic asset allows scarce human and financial resources to be applied to value-added, customer-facing activities and at the same time injecting decision-quality data into business processes across the enterprise.
Over the past 12-18 months we have seen a renewed interest is data management among a variety of organizations. These organizations are looking for ways to manage their data as a strategic enterprise asset. Some of these organizations are going a step further and utilizing this new enterprise asset as a new or enhanced revenue stream. Regardless of its use, managing and leveraging data as a strategic asset can have significant top-line and bottom-line impacts to your organization.
If you have the opportunity to spend the day at “the old ball game” this summer, reflect on your organization’s use of data and what you might be able to do to better manage and use this asset for better, more timely decisions across the enterprise.