The next century natural resource is something you deal with everyday. With millions of pieces of data being collected around the world in every industry, how are you refining yours? This series of blog posts will cover defining, refining, and utilizing your data.
Data is the Next Century Natural Resource
Data is continuously collected from millions of data points around the globe each day. What is the purpose of your data collection? With a mounting collection of data, refining methods for efficient and effective utilization have to be explored and implemented. How are you refining your biggest natural resource?
Defining the Data
Data collection for the sake of having it is akin to panning for gold, finding a 17-pound nugget (like John Reed from North Carolina), and using it to prop your door open. It certainly worked for John Reed as a doorstop but wasn't the best use of his natural resource. John Reed had no idea what he had. To John, this heavy rock kept his door propped open.
In consulting, one of the first steps is to discover what the client has available to them and the goals that they would like to accomplish. In the business realm, a gold nugget exists in the form of data. What data do you have available to you? Not only what data do you collect on a regular basis but what data can you locate to utilize for your business?
Do you have the data that you need to meet the goals you have for your business and is it easily accessible, malleable, and usable? Businesses often identify that they wish they had a better system or acknowledge that their systems are outdated but don't know what to do to address the changes needed. While this is all too common of an issue, the solutions are easier than most expect when the business hires outside assistance. While hiring a consultant to help you identify what data you need and implement a collection system to be able to refine and utilize your biggest and best natural resource creates an initial outflow, the long-term benefits derived by strategically engineering efficiencies into your business are exponentially increased.
Stay tuned for an upcoming post on refinement of data.
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