Thriving as an organisation in the Ages of Analytics and Customer means capturing insights at the point of creation to constantly enhance performance and build a sustainable business foundation 

Forrester perhaps defines the value of having data and analytics at the business fingertips the best - as the key to achieving true customer obsession. The firm also emphasised the value of data in improving operational excellence and business performance alongside agility and adaptivity. There is immense value in taking hold of the data and analytics reins and harnessing them to the potential and capabilities of the organisation. To take the analogy further, as Barry Kemp, Head of Division from Nymbis Cloud Solutions, explains, it is about having the power to rectify issues, catch problems and stay on the edge of optimisation because the data is tightly under the organisation’s control.

“Data and analytics are invaluable for organisations that provide digital infrastructure or solutions as a service, or companies that manage and maintain a lot of technology,” Kemp continues. “You need to quickly understand what’s happening across your entire spectrum of technology and the services you provide. A way of wrapping all the structured and unstructured data into a centralised space that provides insights from an operational perspective.”

Data that’s been harnessed tightly to analytics and that delivers centralised insights ensure that the organisation is able to run a stable infrastructure that’s capable of catching the issues, stopping the threats and optimising systems. When the business can instantly see when a particular service isn’t running properly, or if there is a potential risk or problem, then it can resolve these issues at speed and, in the end, deliver superb service to an increasingly discerning customer. 

“Think real-time data that catches problems before the start, but also think of personalised customer experiences and the ability to constantly tweak and refine services so they can meet the customer and their needs at the edge,” says Head of Cloud Services, Hendrik Meyburgh. “You can also use this information to keep up with customer demands, to optimise scale, and to refine overall business capacity.”

It’s this visibility, this window into the world of the organisation, that really transforms how it approaches decision-making and investment. Instead of data, both structured and unstructured, lying fallow, it becomes a tool that allows the organisation to correlate signals from across disparate systems and gain big-picture insights. It will also boost security as it will pick up anomalies that may normally slip past unnoticed and teams can identify irregular behaviours faster.

“It’s amazing how radically data and analytics can transform operational efficiencies and improve customer services,” says Hendrik. “That said, every touchpoint within your data structure needs to be secure. At a time when information is money and compliance, or lack thereof, is expensive, you need to invest into a data structure that protects it and aligns it with acts like POPIA and GDPR.”

It is, Kemp says, about ensuring that access is restricted to relevant people, that visibility remains a priority throughout the organisation, and that operations and systems are aligned with compliance mandates and expectations. If the organisation’s data structure is secure and the right people have visibility into processes and reporting, then problem resolution and security mitigation move from reactive to proactive. From defensive to preventative.

“The need to be obsessive about data and how it can transform customer experiences, system optimisation and business growth is going to only become even more relevant,” says Kemp. “As artificial intelligence and machine learning continue to shift the parameters of what data and analytics can do, companies are going to be able to pivot, adapt and transform at greater speeds and with more efficiencies than ever before.”