Dataversity: From an afterthought to a core business asset

The proverb - “In God we trust, all others bring data’’ - has adorned the walls of NASA headquarters for decades. The physicist and Nobel Laureate, Richard Feynman concluded that in the absence of data, the scientists had fallen to argue by reason.

This is an effective lesson to apply Artificial Intelligence and Data Science to the world of retail that is led by consumer decisions and choices, which are not always rational. Pairing data-driven decisions with reasons in the form of context and experience could make all the difference.

Today management is going from art to science. Increasingly sophisticated software and tools enables both business leaders and employees to use analytics not only for better decision-making but as a competitive weapon as well. Amazon.com uses analytics to predict what products will be successful and to perfect the efficiency of its supply chain. Supply chain analytics also help companies to create real-time business and market insights to change the competitive game in their favour.

The importance of data is growing in the era digital transformation which is now at its peak. Leaders are also looking to cleanse and connect different data across the enterprise. The quality and governance of data will inevitably negate any ROI in technology and determine digital transformation initiatives.

In case of enhanced customer experience, data can be converted to intelligence, on to knowledge. Data should be supported and contextualized to become more intelligent.90% of SMBs are reluctant to get into this area. Most SMEs today want more of this aspect. Data is going to become a sole source of truth.

Optimization of business processes is one of the main sources of business success. Business leaders with their teams try to create one view and better-quality data for improving customer experience. They digitize the data based on the AI-based OCR technique. Lots of business-houses hold a data warehouse to synchronize data lakes and data marts for creating one view for all these data points. Augmenting the data internally and externally helps in future price and claim management. Using data analytics helps businesses to see customer retention through a better viewpoint. Also, using data analytics, businesses can catch frauds as well.

Data transformation is the other part where businesses can get their profit to manage it. IoT is used to capture data which has become the form for rewriting businesses. Data and analytics hold two important aspects, both internally and externally. A standardized and integrated data is itself a strategy that is stored as a corporate strategy. There is storage, security, managing, monitoring, usage, etc. In a user-driven company, the data of each customer is a fresh look and characteristics. India is on the road ahead of a “digital-first” nation, and it has already embraced technologies like AI, ML, IoT to run the data operation. Not just for the IT sector. For medical, the right kind of data can reach the doctor to save people’s life to cross the barriers and with its actionable intelligence on your business bottom line.

By Debasmita Chatterjee