Data & Insight

Data & Insight

Data is now widely recognised as a critical element of an organisation's ability to operate, transform, grow and succeed in increasingly competitive markets. Organisations of all sizes, across virtually all industries, need to gain actionable insight from an ever-expanding range of data available from multiple sources to drive maximum strategic value.

We are able to work with our clients to assess their current position, develop really effective data strategies, enable these by delivering appropriate data capabilities (systems and people) and then derive valuable insight to optimise business performance.

In order to deliver lasting value, such plans need to be realistic, achievable and sensible if organisations are to avoid the ‘white elephant’ data projects which still happen too frequently – lasting years and consuming millions of pounds before being quietly closed down and written off as they have simply not delivered. Our approach is to start small and not bite off too much too quickly – this enables rapid results, increases confidence in execution and provides immediate returns to support following phases of delivery.

Data assessment & strategy formulation

Increasingly, organisations are amassing significant amounts of data but are constrained in their ability to effectively leverage it because they lack a clear data strategy. We can work with you to deliver such a strategy by:

analysing the current data capabilities already in place against strategic objectives and best practices to inform the production of a clear strategy for data and insight

devising a data strategy for your future, including the key strategic drivers, use cases linked to these, an appropriate underlying data architecture and an effective data governance approach

producing a detailed and costed plan for the implementation of the strategy, along with a phased approach to delivery to maximise value and reduce risk

Building enterprise data capabilities & automation

We differentiate between:

Publishing - the collation, ingestion, mastering, transforming and publishing of data (often best done centrally) which benefits from scale investment into enterprise-wide capabilities; and
Consumption – the subsequent use, analysis and value derivation from data (often best done locally within the business or functional units) which requires more bespoke approaches for each area of the organisation

We can work with you to deliver a range of effective solutions to build these capabilities:

designing and implementing an (increasingly cloud-based) enterprise data architecture and repositories, including data mastering strategies, data lakes/warehouses and visualisation and analytical tools
helping you choose the best model for your organisation to delivery really effective capabilities, balancing the efficiencies of centralised investment with the more localised demands of specific business units
assessing the options for building the people and resource capabilities, including organisational design, in/outsourcing and consideration of partners for delivery
executing delivery programmes to implement all of the above in an Agile fashion, delivering results quickly and cost effectively

Leveraging insight to drive organisational performance

Accurate and timely insight can be used to help businesses improve performance in a number of ways, from improving operational efficiency, identification of cost saving opportunities, generating revenue growth and sales optimisation, product evolution and improved customer service. We can help your organisation to do this through:

carrying out a structured analysis of the data, identifying key trends, potential anomalies, patterns and data gaps, all of which can be done increasingly quickly utilising machine learning and AI
helping you develop and execute plans to most effectively harness this insight, develop the right culture around data and move to become a truly data-driven organisation
working with you to ensure that data can be harnessed by making it available, accurate, timely and providing the business areas with the appropriate tools and training to be able to harness the power of the insight available