Is data generated through online a C-level concern?

Very few would argue if I claim that decision-making shall always be relying on facts, information, knowledge and structured data. At the same time, to make decisions based on anything other than financial data is very uncommon at C-level. I believe that moving forward, your company's executive team needs to start prioritising using data when making decisions.

In today's digital world, most companies have access to vast amounts of data. However, many are not aware of the data they have, nor have they figured out what to do with it. Even fewer know how to use the data as the primary input for decisions. For example, there are still very few companies that use attribution models to measure the effectiveness of marketing, communication and sales activities to understand where they should be spending their budgets.

Meanwhile, many of these same companies talk about their ambition to work with and increasingly rely on AI, machine learning, programmatic advertising and other buzzing technologies. 

While new technology certainly can augment the effectiveness and efficiency of serving customers and doing business in a digital world, first most companies need to do two things:

• Decide that data shall be a natural part of their decision processes.
• Increase their analytics competencies and capabilities.

The most significant hurdles to using data as input for decisions is lack of competence and culture. We rarely run into brands that have and use relevant insights, analytics, conversion rate optimisation and competitor analysis data matched together. 

When companies start using data as described above, they often find their decisions become more accurate. As a consequence, this encourages them to be bold - and become smarter in the way they conduct business.

If you want to learn more about how you can use the vast amounts of data to make decisions, feel free to get in touch with me.