What is data driven?

When a company practices a data driven approach, it makes calculated business decisions based on data analysis and interpretation. This approach allows companies to inspect and arrange their data with the aim of better serving their customers. An organisation can contextualise and customise its messaging to its prospects and customers to achieve a more customer-centric approach, by using data to drive its actions.

Data driven vs. Data centric

Data-driven companies use data to inform decision making on all levels. Data-centricity involves placing data at the core of your business operations.

What is data driven decision making?

Data-driven decision making (DDDM) occurs when a company uses facts, metrics, and data to guide tactical business decisions that align with its ambitions and objectives. When an organisation recognises the full value of their data, they are able to make transformative decisions which are supported by real-time data analytics. In the pursuit to be data-driven, enterprises should begin by developing three core DDDM features: data dexterity, analytics agility, and community engagement.

What is data driven marketing?

Data-driven marketing is a methodology that leverages vast amounts of data to create effective marketing techniques, targeting specific demographics and user groups at an individual level. Using data to inform your marketing strategy and decision making can reveal sophisticated insights about consumer behaviour, that when acted upon, can grow your business significantly. Because big data is harnessed directly from customer interactions, it is the kind of information that can help improve and enrich any marketing strategy. This level of knowledge and understanding of your customers paves the way for organisations to create more relevant content, at the most significant moments of your customer’s buyer’s journey.

Benefits of a Data Driven Marketing Approach

Data-driven marketing allows businesses to unearth what works in their marketing campaigns, what needs improvement, and how to optimise marketing efforts to encompass the most successful tactics. In addition, this approach can:

Speed up decision making
Reveal customer expectations and insights
Boost time management capabilities
Improve operational efficiency and clarity
Provide market/customer segmentation
Personalise messaging and content
Refine customer experience
Reduce the risk of product failure
Provide multi-channel access to data

Promoting a Data Driven Culture

Interestingly, the biggest barriers to creating data-driven businesses aren’t technical, but rather, they’re cultural. For businesses to successfully implement a data-driven approach, changes must be made at the managerial level; wherein managers can help employees normalise data-driven decision making, without feeling abandoned by upper-level management or executives. The company culture around data needs to shift in order for data to become an automatic consideration amongst employees. Only then can leaders exercise a powerful impact on behaviour by cleverly choosing what to measure and what metrics they expect employees to use. Top-level executives should also democratise access to data within corporations by investing in a universal data platform. Too often, data is only accessed by analysts or executives and is not available to all. For a data-driven culture to be possible, employees need access to quality data in order to drive decision-making on all tiers.