We live in an age in which not having data can be very costly.
It costs money to create and store data. The potential value of that data can only be realized if it can then be used by the right people and systems at the right time.
What is the cost of not having data when needed? It’s difficult to determine a dollar value, but sometimes it can be frighteningly expensive. Bonds traded at the wrong time, allergies not known before medication administered, product not available to ship to your largest customer…
typically only the most obvious data gaps are easily identified and dealt with. Systems like purchasing connected to inventory, or budgeting connected to financials. Many, many, many other data transfers are accomplished daily, but they are often manual, infrequent or one-time. Take your bank account for example: is it automatically connected to your bookkeeping system? Or do you create a download from the bank that you then import into your system? Or do you just manually update?
What other systems are vital to your organization that are not connected efficiently? Over the long term your staff will just stop looking for the data and make sub-optimal decisions because it’s just too time-consuming to get the appropriate info in a timely way.
What do you do?
Identify the critical decisions that need to be made and analyze the process. For each:
- Is the right person making the decision?
- Does he or she have the best data?
- If they don’t have it, what has been or could be the potential cost?
- Where is the data and can it be obtained efficiently?
- What is the cost of changing your system (technical AND manual)?
Your organization probably already has, or has access to, the data that is needed; the challenge is to be able to identify and employ the right tools to get it into the right hands at the right time.
