Building a Data-Driven Organization for the Global Economy

1: Understand what it means to be data-driven.

Firstly, it’s important for a business to fully grasp the philosophy of being data-driven. Many companies treat data as a commodity: something that can be collected, stored, and then brought out for analysis and use whenever there’s a specific need for it. 

Being truly data-driven moves away from this and gives the workforce instant, always-on access to data, but this requires systems and applications to be reorganized to support that access. That way, employees are better able to make quick, informed decisions as a core part of their day-to-day duties. Alongside this, the workforce should understand this philosophy and be able to engage with it without difficulty or inconvenience.

2: Invest in the necessary technology.

Of course, becoming a data-driven organization means nothing without the right technological systems to make the most of the change and make sense of all that data. Many legacy solutions may provide dashboards, reporting features and other functions that can analyze data, but can’t support real data-driven innovations like real-time analytics supported by AI, or full cloud-based data access.

An excellent example of a solution that supports data-driven operations is a global payroll solution. This can bring together disparate data from business departments all over the world, and employees operating under different currencies and tax jurisdictions, and make the running of payroll quicker, more efficient and more rationalized.

3: Create thoughtful organizational change.

As well as the technology and the data itself, becoming data-driven requires a change in culture that permeates throughout an organization. Such a major shift in how a business operates needs the workforce to buy into it and to make their best efforts to engage with the potential of data as best they can. 

There are three ways in which this can be enabled:

Engage with business-relevant data - and nothing else
With so much data around, and so many different analytical tools on the market, it can be easy to be overwhelmed by the possibilities and lose sight of what’s really important. Failing to use the right data in the right ways can be a huge waste of time and resources, and hinder employees from making business-critical decisions. How a technology platform understands data and the context behind it plays a vital role in getting this right.

Using the example of a global payroll platform, a company wanting to run payroll in several South American countries will be held back if their provider only has experience in Europe and the United States. Any solution applied must come with the relevant support for all the countries in which a global business operates.

Disrupt your business’s culture
Breaking people out of ways of working that they may have been used to for years can be a difficult undertaking, but it’s essential to making the data-driven transition a reality. There are a number of initiatives that can be taken to sufficiently disrupt this culture, including:

• Educating employees to treat data as a way of solving problems, rather than an asset they need to support their work
• Embrace data that may not deliver positive results, and use it as a springboard to make improvements, rather than as bad news to be suppressed
• Consider hiring a chief digital office or similar ‘data champion’ who can help disrupt the culture and encourage employees to change their ways of working

Make adaptation easier on employees
Connected to the previous point, employees will understandably shy away from changing how they use data if it makes their day-to-day life more difficult. As such, steps should be taken to ease the transition and encourage a positive spirit around being more data-driven:

• Innovation should be encouraged and even incentivized, so that the workforce feels empowered to push the boundaries of what they can do, uncover potential pitfalls and find new ways of driving even more business value from data
• Reorganizing around data and analytics should be done with collaboration in mind; more technically-focused staff should be able to come together with other areas of the business to collectively get more from the switch
• A proactive approach should be taken to addressing employee concerns; this could include a study to identify particular pain points employees have with a global solution, and the formulation of a response plan that addresses those points in turn
  
  

In summary

Nobody should be under any illusions that transitioning towards becoming a data-driven business is a minor undertaking. It necessitates a major change across every area of an organization, and demands buy-in from the workforce at last. But the benefits it can deliver can be transformative for a business, especially in a fast-moving business world where data is regularly used to drive meaningful competitive advantage.

As part of this, choosing the right global solutions to make sense of data is crucial. And just as important as the solution itself is ensuring that the partner providing it has the necessary expertise, knowledge and support to make the solution valuable, wherever your business operates.

CloudPay’s global payroll solution is trusted by international businesses the world over to make payroll simpler, faster and more data-driven in every corner of the planet. Take a closer look at our technology here.