Data in everyday use
Hey, lets face it, we use data everyday at our work place or even within our personal lives. It comes at a cost to your organisation or at a personal level by the time spent to access some data. So why then, so little resources (time, finance and labour) are allocated for such a vital function within an organisation.
As an individual, each of us understands the psychological importance of obtaining data for high involvement purchases and to arrive at the most appropriate decision. Yet, there are many individuals who purchase high involvement goods or services on "impulsive behaviour" A typical example for acquiring a motor vehicle (high involvement good) may include:
- Problem Identification - triggered by unsatisfied needs or wants;
- Data Search - psychological costs, opportunity costs, products, services etc;
- Evaluation of alternatives;
- Purchase;
- Post purchase evaluation
In most situations, those individual, high involvement purchases may occur seldom and the future use of the data may not be as useful or cost effective to store for use a few years later.
Alternatively, organisations utilise time, capital and labour daily to obtain, generate or collate data to maintain its operations, plan projects, or evaluate performances. Even so, the data acquired daily may have greater use at a future date (statutory obligations, strategic planning etc.) but how is data captured and maintained at its origin for future manipulation as information or organisational knowledge?
Value in data - information can be vital
Why do organisations have different methodologies for managing similar data? The answer maybe in the importance that management has given to its business strategy and the allocation of resources. Most organisation structures do not have an information systems and management as a function as they do for finance, manufacturing etc. The data function has normally been a part of some other functional department such as Finance or Administration with limited resources allocated for achieving data services. More importantly, in-house data management expertise is at best limited and data structures are basically non-existence as the focus is primarily on the immediate data needs. This suggests that at present, organisations may not be able to leverage its data resources to become more competitive (Michael Porter's Competitive Forces Model), or to make better use of technology to add value to business processes by using information systems as a strategic tool (Porter 1985, Value Chain Model). However, it should be noted that there are many successful organisations who have not adopted data management structures or techniques into their business models.
Benefits vs Costs - decision making
Each organisation today has had cause to reassess its business strategies with the changing dynamics in the global economy. As a result, cost leadership or cost reductions has cause many organisations to undertake in-depth analysis of all investments, rightfully so, and select the most profitable investments based on the limited resources. Intangible benefits are more complex to measure and many managers and accountants take a conservative value of such benefits over the costs, and hold the view that if it is not core business, it should be avoided or deferred to a later date, or in some cases, decided that they are not prepared to change their business model if its successful over the years as in the example of Eastman Kodak article by Richard Waters and Chris Nuttall in San Francisco in the Financial Times, dated January 19, 2012.
Data as a tool or competitive advantage
Each of us continue to use data on a personal basis or at work for analysis or to collate to make informed decisions, there is no question of that. The understanding for the use of data would continue to be debated at the work environment as the verdict is still out on the success of data management and gaining competitive advantage when compared to improved customer services and other tangible deliverables.....so is it a tool or could data become an asset to gain competitive advantage over their rivals?
As individuals, the use of data for making decisions would be limited to high involvement goods or services and may not relevant in the future, data in these cases are a tool.
The end goal lies on how an individual or an organisation places value to the data generated today to add value to decision making at a later date........
