Businesses that use data intelligence to drive their strategy are 58 percent more likely to exceed their revenue goals than non-data intelligent organizations, according to a survey of 906 global businesses conducted in January 2020 by Forrester Consulting, on behalf of Collibra. The study defines “data-intelligent organizations” as “those who agree they have the ability to connect the right data, insights and algorithms so people can drive business value through data.”
“The Business Impact of Data Intelligent Management” found that companies respect data-centricity but inconsistently execute it. For example, 84 percent of business analysts in the study agreed that it’s important to prioritize data at the heart of their crucial business decisions and strategies, but only half are actually doing so.
Data intelligent businesses are more likely to reach their main business goals and are better at mitigating risk exposure, addressing privacy and improving consumer trust. These organizations saw an 8 percent advantage in improving customer trust, an 81 percent advantage in increasing revenue and a 173 percent advantage in better complying with regulations and requirements.
Sixty-six percent of Australian businesses are most likely to routinely or always leverage data for decisions, followed by the same 62 percent of US businesses and 52 percent of European businesses.
Nearly all data intelligent businesses rate themselves as capable or very capable of excelling across the seven pillars of data management including finding data efficiently, accessing it, understanding it, applying it cross-functionally, publishing it, ensuring its accuracy and using it to drive business outcomes.
Still, nearly half of businesses fail to always or even routinely leverage data at the core of their business decisions. Manual data management tasks rob analysts at non-data intelligent organizations of the ability to leverage data.
Respondents reported spending 14 percent of their workweek on performing the actual data analysis, 12 percent on validating the accuracy of the data and 11 percent on aggregating the data into a usable dataset and the same for finding the data they need. As a result, these businesses are 55 percent less likely to say their data management strategies positively contribute to drive favorable business decisions.
Six out of 10 respondents reported that tools that streamline the search process for analysis, data access and data quality management will make data analysis somewhat or much easier.
More mature data intelligent companies plan to increase their investment in data management technology. In fact, they’re 52 percent more likely to increase spend on these tools than non-data intelligent organizations.
