The Data Imperative

As featured on BusinessMirror:  The Data Imperative

Today's hyper-connected technology, communication, and media-obsessed culture generate tremendous quantities of data. 

Why is this massive volume of data important? Data is enterprises’ gateway to understanding customers and catering to them in a world where customization is the rule, not the exception. What’s more, insights from data can help these firms develop new go-to-market strategies, discover new revenue streams and capture market share from competitors. The technology, media and telecommunications (TMT) sector is at the forefront of data creation and therefore has access to a wealth of it. Yet, availability does not equal realized opportunities. Most TMT firms are not yet taking full advantage of the opportunities from data as only 29 percent have adopted a comprehensive data strategy at scale. At the same time, more than 70 percent of TMT companies believe it is likely that effective and widespread data usage will radically change the business model.

In the Philippines, survival was a top concern for many businesses during the pandemic and accelerating digital transformation activities became necessary to maintain operations to adapt to a vastly changed world.  Adopting technology and digital platforms also meant that businesses now have access to large and rich data assets that their technology investments are producing.

What this article shows is that TMT companies are underutilizing their data resources. At the same time, they correlate a potential for outsized financial returns by leveraging data across all value chain activities. To close this gap, TMT companies plan to significantly accelerate data access, management, and analytical activities and functions in the next two years. This puts these activities on par with the focus of most other digital transformational programs.

During the monumental changes of the last 2 years, few industries have embraced and enabled digital transformation and service delivery more than those of the TMT sector. Many of the transitions to online remote work and education can be credited to TMT. For example, in April 2020, Microsoft Teams reported a new daily record of 2.7 billion meeting minutes in one day, a 200 percent increase from 900 million on March 16.

Microsoft and many other TMT companies have seen 2 years’ worth of digital transformation consolidated into a few months. Yet, data often was not factored as part of the digital transformation equation. When asked about data usage over the next 12 to 24 months, 46 percent of TMT enterprises agree strongly that the pandemic derailed progress in data usage by shifting the urgent focus to cloud deployment, the critical underpinning of digital transformation.

Moreover, when asked about data usage over the next 12 to 24 months, 73 percent of respondents agreed that as organizations rushed to survive and thrive, most did not have time to think through the treasure trove of data they were creating for themselves. Underscoring this trend is that more than 80 percent of global TMT companies believe they are underutilizing their data volume for competitive advantage due to more pressing business issues related to the pandemic.

More than 40 percent of companies reported being optimized or world-class across key capability categories such as data security, governance, compliance and master data management.

Importantly, approximately 25 percent of companies consider their organizations to have world-class data architecture and development for data security. Given the critical role that data plays in cybersecurity, companies should not be satisfied with being less than world-class.

Despite the underutilization of data and the dearth of strategy around it, TMT executives feel that data investment is on the right track. More than half of companies think their current spending on data is significantly (12 percent) or moderately (43 percent) above long-term requirements. For 39 percent, spending is about right, and for 6 percent, it is too low.

Given that data efforts and initiatives are still behind digital transformation, the issue may not be that companies aren’t spending enough on data initiatives, but that they don’t have the right focus on investment priorities and governance on data imperatives. 

In taking the steps to effective data usage in TMT, we identify five high-impact initiatives.

• Treat data like an asset and its use as a competitive differentiator: TMT companies are still in the early stages of transformative data use, but they are moving quickly to change this mindset. As the fog from the pandemic lifts, hybrid and work-from-home workforces are balancing out, and organizations have the perspective to step back and look at their data strategy through a more holistic lens. Recognizing data strategy as a foundational enterprise capability for success is driving this shift.
• Target at least 10 percent of overall revenue from the monetization of data through new products and services.
• Rethink the steps to achieve a cloud-based data architecture leveraging hyper scalers globally: This is the path to supercharge data access and accessibility across the ecosystem.
• Use data in addition to process and others as the foundation of a connected enterprise within TMT: Expanding connectedness beyond the four walls of a TMT enterprise to encompass a larger ecosystem will only be accomplished through the effective use of customer, operational, compliance, and security data.
• Drive transformation through the use of data with a focus on customer centricity: Democratize the data — data sources both for today and the future focusing on both breadth and depth.