4 min read
Is your organization getting everything out of the data?
Whatever you do and whichever industry you work in, you will always be faced with decisions. These decisions should, at least in part, be made based on data. To ensure that this growing amount of data leads to well-founded decisions, it's important to have a high degree of corporate data literacy. Find out in this blog what corporate data literacy entails and which factors play a role.
Can you 'read' data?
By combining data, it becomes possible to analyze it and improve processes based on your analyses. You can do all of this in an analytics solution such as Qlik Sense. Using analytics is not limited to a specific industry and can be used anywhere to make decisions. The only thing needed for this is that your organization must be data literate. This doesn't mean that everyone needs to be a statistician, mathematician, or data scientist. Being data literate means you know the fundamentals of data, data analysis, and the tools and techniques needed for this. It means you can read, analyze, approve, or indeed question data. However, research from the Data Literacy Project, which Qlik contributes to, shows that few people consider themselves data literate.
76% of top business decision-makers have little confidence in their ability to read, analyze and discuss data
– The Data Literacy Index
Corporate Data Literacy
Virtually all business leaders acknowledge that data is important within their industry and for making decisions within a company. However, it turns out that only 8% of these companies have made changes in the past 5 years to the way they use data. In fact, making data-driven decisions scores the lowest of all three dimensions measured to calculate the 'Corporate Data Literacy Score'. This means that even companies that do have data literate employees still aren't efficiently converting data into usable information.
Companies will need to become more efficient at making data accessible. If employees have to line up at data scientists to get their questions answered, they will ultimately not be able to compete.
– Mike Capone, CEO at Qlik
Especially in larger organizations, this means there are still many undiscovered insights and efficiency gains possible within the organization. These will only be discovered if the right questions are asked by the right people. At the moment, more and more data is becoming available on the work floor, while many employees don't yet know how to use this data in the right way. The degree to which employees can read, analyze, and assess data is therefore crucial. The better the level of data literacy, the more questions will be asked and answered.
Two-thirds (63%) of managers worldwide have indicated they want to work on the level of data literacy within their organizations. So how do you ensure your organization becomes data literate? Corporate Data Literacy cannot simply be achieved by hiring data specialists. Corporate Data Literacy is an organization's ability to read, analyze, use for decisions, question, and share data within the organization. As part of the Data Literacy Project, Qlik has developed a Corporate Data Literacy Score built on three pillars: Data Literacy Skills, Data-Driven Decision Making, and Data Dispersion.
Data Literacy Skills
Data literate organizations need employees who are data literate. Many organizations build data skills by hiring people, but at the same time education programs are also needed to help all employees understand and use data in their roles within the organization.
Data-Driven Decision Making
Making data-driven decisions is measured based on 2 aspects: Data Decentralization and Data Resources. Data decentralization means making all the necessary data available, and Data Resources are the resources needed to gather and present insights in order to make data-driven decisions.
Data Dispersion
Data dispersion is the degree to which data is used within the organization. It's important that every department, and not just clusters of specialists, has the ability to gain insights and make decisions based on them.
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