James Springham, Clekt Commercial Director addresses this question.
Since founding Clekt in 2020 we have seen a huge increase in the understanding of the importance of data across almost all industry sectors. Retrospective and detailed business analysis using data is a given for many businesses, but there is still a lack of understanding and even scepticism about the opportunities presented by automation, data science and AI.
The advances made in the last couple of years mean the capabilities outlined above are in reach for almost any size of organisation.
In today’s market, organisations not investing in data initiatives will suffer while their competitors build future success and real enterprise value upon the foundations of their data strategy. So how do we help organisations accelerate their data journey?
A major key to success in data initiatives, ensuring your organisation perceives value in the result is the time it takes for value to be realised. This hinges on your leveraging expertise and experience in the data space. A data partner provides a concentrated resource of experience, a wider skillset than a less mature internal team can provide, experience in potential project pitfalls and many previous comparable successful projects under their belt result in high-quality output at pace which simply can’t be achieved in any other way.
It’s imperative that any data projects have a clear and tangible projected value, with a fast and incremental speed to value. In our experience the proof really is “in the pudding” and demonstrating business benefits from an investment in data is the best way to release additional investment as well as drive organisational change. A proactive partner can help identify possible data opportunities and be accountable for delivering tangible results in short order.
It is also essential to align data project outcomes with the expectations of what the business will get from the investment, to ensure data initiatives are viewed as a wider commercial success. Too often data initiatives require huge amounts of heavy technical work which can take the focus away from business outcomes. It’s imperative to clear about the business outcomes to be achieved from any data engineering work. We have found that incremental delivery which is business focused and builds scalable data platforms as a by product is the best route for most organisations. When identifying advanced use cases such as AI or data science it is imperative to have a commercial hypothesis in mind which can be quickly proved or disproved.
It is therefore imperative to have a rapid test and learn approach. Not all data initiatives, particularly AI or data science will deliver the anticipated results. By running concurrent initiatives, not putting all your eggs in one basket and running POC’s which can be scaled into production, you maximise chances of success and ensure maximum business buy in.
At Clekt we understand both data and commercial expertise are critical to extracting maximum return on an investment in data. We have carefully constructed our team to provide our customers with optimum data and commercial support, speaking the business language of data is crucial to achieving buy-in at Board level and keeping projects on the correct course, ensuing your business outcomes are realised through the course of each data project undertaking.
To unlock your companys most important asset and find out more about Clekt, please get in touch.
