Shifting Perspective Part II: The Importance of Ideas in Data Maturity
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Any chess player will tell you — simply memorizing the pieces and their movements won’t make you a master. To truly understand the game, you need to have a deeper understanding of the strategies and techniques that will help you outmaneuver your opponent. Similarly, data maturity cannot be achieved without incorporating qualitative data into the mix.
With data becoming an ever-present part of running a company, it’s shocking that nearly half of businesses don’t have the technology or skills to fully incorporate the data they’re collecting. This discrepancy leads to money and valuable ideas being left on the table.
Less than 0.5% of data collected is ever utilized to its full potential. To make the most of the information available, you must be consciously working towards data maturity in all aspects of your business.
So far, in our Shifting Perspective series, we’ve discussed how vital quantitative data is for a company’s success. In this article, we will explore why qualitative data is essential for achieving true data maturity and discuss strategies for leveraging it effectively.
What is Data Maturity?
Data maturity is the level of a company’s ability to use data effectively and make informed decisions from it. It measures how well-equipped an organization is to turn raw data into actionable insights usable for decision-making.
To achieve true data maturity, companies must collect both quantitative and qualitative data. Qualitative data provides context and meaning that helps organizations better understand their customers and markets, while quantitative data gives them hard numbers.
Fully incorporating qualitative data and ideas into your data analysis requires you to use a system that allows them to evolve and serve different purposes throughout the process. Without these steps in place, a company can not reach full data maturity or make the most out of the information available to them.
Benefits of Qualitative Data Maturity
Having access to accurate data gives businesses an edge. It allows them to understand customer trends, predict future outcomes, and make informed decisions. By quickly identifying areas for improvement or optimization, companies can save time, money, and resources.
Studies show that even a 10% increase in data accessibility can lead to $65 million more income for a Fortune 1000 company. That same kind of jump in revenue is possible for a company of any size that focuses on its data usage and maturity.
Prioritizing qualitative data allows organizations to spot opportunities they may have missed due to a lack of context or limited access to information. If you start collecting ideas in the same way you collect numerical data, you’ll have a clearer picture of how to utilize them. This allows the ideas to grow into the next big initiative within your company.
Assessing Your Data Maturity
The first step towards growing your data maturity is knowing where you currently stand. Be vigilant in your search for signs of data immaturity to pinpoint where your efforts should focus. Some signs that your company has room to grow include:
Low Engagement - Your IT professionals should not be the only ones engaging with data and analytics. That is a sign that your company at large does not understand or have access to the data that could shape how they do their jobs.
Failed Data Management - Too much data without a plan to properly store, analyze, and make decisions with it shows data immaturity.
Lack of Data Governance - You must have policies or processes in place to manage how data is used, shared, and safeguarded throughout its lifecycle.
Unclear Goals - A data strategy is essential to know what information to collect and what to do with it once it’s collected.
How to Cultivate Qualitative Data Maturity
The steps your company needs to take toward digital maturity depend on how far along the process you already are. Let’s look at the various stages of maturity and how you can incorporate qualitative data into each.
Stage One: Discovery
If you are only using data sporadically and do not have a defined strategy for data usage, your company is just getting started on its data journey. You’ll want to start by taking stock of your current procedures and developing a plan for data utilization going forward.
The good news is you have a chance to prioritize qualitative data from the start. Make sure you’re finding tools like Stormboard that allow you to engage with ideas in the same way you would other data points.
Stormboard creates a culture where ideas (and data) are central to everything. It allows them to shift and evolve within your workspace as the data matures and as your competency with data-driven decision-making evolves.
Stage Two: Transformation
As your company grows in its relationship with data, it will start to look into digital transformation and how a focus on information can become the bedrock for innovation. It’s becoming standard for team members across the board to use data when reacting to changes and making decisions.
In this stage, you’ll see the competitive advantages of using data to make decisions. A key challenge is ensuring that everyone has access to real-time data and understands how to use it. This is where data visualization comes into play.
Tools like Stormboard allow you to create word clouds, concept maps, and more, making data easy to understand for the entire team. You can edit storms from anywhere, ensuring that the information is as up-to-date as possible.
Stormboard’s reporting features even provide you with everything you need to take ideas and other qualitative data points and integrate them into your data lifecycle as it develops.
Stage Three: Innovation
Every bit of competency with data takes you closer to being at the top of your field. As a company discovers new and inventive ways to utilize both quantitative and qualitative data, you’ll be able to create and maintain a clear competitive advantage.
At this stage, every idea is brought into the fold of information and easily transformed into usable data. Stormboard’s interface allows these ideas to live not on some static design-first canvas, but in an ever-evolving ecosystem that leverages data from every person on your team as well as your customer base.
This means that no idea gets left behind, and your company is constantly coming up with the next big thing that shapes the business landscape.
The Bottom Line
Data is a powerful resource that can be used to unlock insights and increase efficiency for any organization. Unfortunately, many businesses don’t know how to take advantage of the potential data holds.
By leveraging data-driven solutions and decision-making, and fully realizing the potential of qualitative data, companies can better understand their customers’ needs and optimize their processes accordingly.
Just like a chess master practicing their craft, growing into a digitally mature business takes time. However, with the right tools at your disposal, and an understanding of qualitative data, your company can become a highly effective hub of innovation in no time at all.
Stormboard empowers data-driven companies to turn their unstructured human interactions into information-rich collaborative workspaces. Ideas evolve throughout their lifecycle and become viable data points; enabling better decision-making and eliminating process inefficiency.
Get in touch with one of our experts today and get a first-hand look at how your business can shift perspective and find new value in the data you’re already producing every day.
About the author:
A programmer by trade, Nick Saraev is a freelance writer and entrepreneur with a penchant for helping people excel in their careers. He's been featured on Popular Mechanics & Apple News, and has founded several successful companies in e-commerce, marketing, and artificial intelligence. When he's not working on his latest project, you can find him hiking or painting.
