What Does it Mean for an Organization to be “Data Driven?”

March 22, 2022

This article is included in these additional categories:

Analytics, Automated & MarTech | Customer Experience | Customer-Centric | Data-driven

Marketing is transforming to a data-driven discipline, whether that’s in customer engagement strategies, marketing resource allocation efforts, or even how TV ads are bought. But how does an organization define for itself what it means to be data driven? A report from Experian [download page] takes a look.

A leading 44% of respondents say that a key indicator of being a data-driven organization is a high level of trust in the quality of data. This is reinforced by a separate finding that for 9 in 10 (91%), data quality is an essential component of a data-driven culture. With data quality frequently cited as a key challenge in organizations, it’s fair to assume that having high levels of trust in this is emblematic of a data-driven organization.

There’s more to being a data-driven organization than just quality data, though. Other high-ranking indicators in the survey include the presence of easy to use data management tools as well as speedy, flexible access to data that can be scaled as needed. Many also point to a culture that adopts and uses data and insights regularly, as well as the use of data visualization tools that enable insights to be easily communicated.

So, About Data Management, Then…

Organizations are planning a variety of ways to become more agile and flexible in data management, per the report. And the leading way by which to become more agile and flexible? Improving data quality so as to gain more trust in it.

Organizations are also looking to improve their technology for ease of use, improve the data experience for users, improve data transparency, and increase data literacy training.

Respondents are almost united in their consensus that an agile data management program will bring a wide variety of benefits, from better decision making (92%) to customer experience (91%), operational efficiencies (91%) and innovation (89%), among others.

The Customer Will Benefit

Almost 9 in 10 businesses surveyed believe that being data driven helps them stay on top of customer needs and market trends. Data management can enable increased customer centricity for businesses in a range of ways, from better customer experiences to improved innovation, a focus on better rather than more customer data, and improved data security.

With 93% saying that the quality of contact data has become more important to them over the past year, respondents point to email data as the most important type of contact data over the coming year, followed by identity data, location/delivery point data, and phone data.

About the Data: The results are based on an October 2021 survey of more than 900 C-suite executives, directors and managers sitting in departments including IT, data, operations, finance, customer service, and more.

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