strategy to be a success.
Ultimately, there is a mismatch between the execution of data management and what the business actually wants, resulting in various departments disregarding the organisation’s technical data strategy in order to satisfy their data needs. Counterintuitively, this leads to the creation of data silos, a lack of data integrity, multiple versions of the truth and eventually a data strategy that fails.
instances where data is available, but is not used to its full potential because the business people don’t know how to use self-service business intelligence (BI) tools to guide decision making. This is a common pitfall of having only the IT department lead data strategies, but it also points to the requirement for data literacy across all levels of the business.
Does this mean that all senior business executives in an organisation should be data scientists? No. On the contrary, all that is needed is for them to be able to use the self-service BI tools and formulate their questions about the business in a way that allows the actual data scientists to manipulate data and get the answers.
One way to get this right is by having a data team that brings together business analysts (who are responsible for various business functions), supported by data scientists and developers who can assist with complex transformations and creating predictive algorithms. Not only does this ensure consistency in an organisation’s data strategy, but it also means that the business’s unique data requirements are met while IT best-practice is also adhered to.
The continent is blessed with a natural abundance of talent and potential, and having data strategies that are driven by a combination of business and IT – with the weighting of efforts allocated differently at various stages of the process – will be key to unleashing this potential. Meanwhile, this combination will also enable organisations to perform data projects that are directly linked to business goals and empower business people to make data-driven decisions on a daily basis – helping drive the competitiveness of businesses in Africa.
It should be noted, however, that there is no one-size-fits-all approach that can be applied in different countries around Africa, especially given that some challenges are unique to the continent. There are also issues such as data sovereignty that need to be carefully considered; it is best that organisations work closely with a partner that has on-the-ground experience as well as a deep understanding of the conditions in different regions across the continent.
As an end-to-end data and information company, Insight Consulting works with businesses across Africa to formulate and deliver on data strategies at all levels of the organisation, unlocking actionable insights with the latest thinking and technology across the data value chain.
