Are You Heading For a Data Dead-End?

Computer scientist Kurt Bollacker said – “data that is loved tends to survive.”

The power that data offers is undeniable. And yet, harnessing, quality checking and contextualizing it continues to challenge business leaders. Which is why, for the new magazine from Qlik, Active Intelligence, experienced business and technology journalist Martin Veitch chose to expose and explore the gaps in today’s business intelligence market.

As part of that exploration, he considers the benefits of modern data analytics pipelines to drive change within a business by uncovering data, governing it, understanding it, augmenting it and delivering it where it needs to go. All of this is what enables Active Intelligence – the ability to take an action based on reliable, context-rich data that offers value to the business.

Most importantly, it is action that takes place in the moment. Companies no longer have the luxury of time, so today’s modern data analytics tools, in collaboration with humans to add context and risk perception, are vital to enabling as close to real-time decision-making as possible. As Martin puts it, in today’s fast paced world “decisions must be taken quickly before context has changed and the moment is gone. Seize that moment and the promise is enormous.”

The key is not getting stuck in a data dead-end, which leads to a lack of decision-making, not moving forward, not innovating and consequently not competing. This will happen if a company has holes in its data pipeline. By leaking data or just not having the right data in the first place, decisions are made based on incomplete information and crucial insights can be missed. The consequence of which, as Clayton Christensen wrote in The Innovator’s Dilemma, is failure, because too many companies remain “stuck to the road that has made them successful when they should have realized they were heading for a data dead-end.”

Data and analytics should be as dynamic as the world that they exist within. Harnessing the potential of Active Intelligence with the help of data pipelines is the modern business leader’s superpower. But don‘t just take my word for it. I urge you to have a read of Martin’s article, where he discusses this topic in more detail.

If you want to dig deeper into the benefits of building a robust data pipeline further, check out the Active Intelligence magazine and read on for Martin’s interview with Schneider Electric about the rewards they have seen from this approach. Spoiler alert: there have been many!