One of the common aims of digital transformation is often phrased as “becoming a data-driven company.” Whether it’s business intelligence, predictive analytics or machine learning, using objective data rather than hunches to drive decision-making is something businesses increasingly talk about.
There are plenty of challenges. Not all large organizations are nimble enough to make the most of data-driven decision making, or skilled enough to collect reliable data at scale and ask the right questions. A majority of executives in the annual NewVantage Partners big data study are looking to data to make better decisions, but only a third believe their company has a data-driven culture.
And data doesn’t have all the answers. Your data might not tell you that a successful product could be better, because the data says it’s already successful.
Making data-driven decisions is about asking the right questions and having the right data to get the answers. You’ll start seeing that referred to as “decision science” (or “decision intelligence”).