If your firm − and that means everybody in it − does not “speak data” then it is certainly headed for the scrapheap sometime soon. In the first of two articles, I look at why data literacy is so important, what the current state of play is, and how to start the journey towards becoming a truly data-driven enterprise.
With the advent of the fourth industrial revolution, and the ongoing digitalisation of business processes, we are generating more and more data.that by 2025, we will be generating 10 times more data than we are now − a gobsmacking 163 zettabytes. By then, nearly 20% of that data will be critical to our daily lives, and 10% “hypercritical”. More than a quarter of it will be real-time in nature, and the bulk will come from the internet of things.
78% of business decision-makers said they would be willing to invest more time and energy into improving their data skills. In the typical organisation, one could categorise data users into four broad groups. Foundation users do not yet recognise the value of data in the organisation and have not had any training. Their jobs typically have not required them to interact with data regularly.