Data Literacy: The Key to Creating Business Value

According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), “even though spending on big data and analytics products is supposed to surpass $200 million by 2020, 50% of organizations will still lack the Data Literacy and AI skills to achieve business value.” As you can learn from these data, despite a big amount of investment on data products, without data literacy and AI skills, the return can be limited and the expected business values cannot be achieved. The more data literate the organization is, the more business values it can create. 

Data insights are essential for creating business value, as data alone remains unprocessed information. To extract value from data, proficiency in all aspects of the data insight pipeline as shown below is crucial. Depending on the complexity and scale of the datasets, different levels of skills and different types of tools are required. Lacking the necessary skills and tools for any part of the pipeline can hinder the realization of expected business outcomes.

Let’s take a fintech startup as an example. This fintech startup issues digital credit cards and has collected a lot of customers’ information due to their successful marketing and sales effort. They purchase a BI tool that enables customized visualizations to gain real-time access to the key insights such as customer purchasing patterns and demographics insights to promote user acquisition. However, as a high performance processing BI tool, it requires more advanced data models for ingesting and storing data. The company realizes that they actually lack the advanced data modeling skills to make the BI tool work well, which leads to unachieved business values on user acquisition.

If the company is more data literate, they can evaluate their current skills and needs more accurately to avoid unnecessary investments in advanced tools when simpler ones suffice. If deeper insights require more sophisticated tools and skills, the company can outsource expertise or hire individuals with relevant skills and experiences. 

Emphasizing data literacy empowers businesses to maximize their data assets and make informed decisions. With the right level of skills and the right tools, businesses can unlock the full potential of data insights and achieve expected business values.