The Power of Data and Analytics for Competitive Advantage

The Transformative Power of Data

I make no apologies for repeating the following quote from Equinox CIO Milind Wagle...

“Data and analytics (is) more important than ever. You’re making decisions daily with changing information and reacting to factors outside your control.”
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This becomes even more critical in times of uncertainty.

The value and transformative power of data and analytics should not be a secret to anyone these days but all too often, insufficient focus and investment is given to enable businesses to realise the value from the resource they already have.

The Importance of Speed
Unfortunately, while many businesses have reasonable data infrastructures they are often frustrated by their inability to deep dive into the data. Often when the data is there, the business cannot access it quickly enough to draw out insights that they can act on in a timely manner.

Even when you have limitations in your existing data infrastructures you need to find ways to speed up access to your own data. Management need to know how the business is doing today, not how it was doing 3 weeks ago!

Over reliance on 3rd party and industry generic data
Then there are businesses that have an over or sole reliance on industry generic data and make decisions based solely on that generic information. This is particularly true in the Vehicle Leasing sector. As a result, those businesses simply cannot gain any real competitive advantage as their decisions are based on generic data which, while useful, is not specifically tailored to their business or their customer base.

It makes sense therefore for businesses to look at how they can leverage their own internal data. This doesn’t mean ignoring industry data. Indeed using it to enrich your own data can add real value but it is this combination coupled with the analytical capability to rapidly extract actionable insight on an ongoing basis that counts.

Creating and using Proprietary Data
To create additional advantage you should also seek to leverage proprietary data. By this, I mean data that is unique to your business. And you might ask whether this is simply the same as internal data. It isn’t.

Internal data may or may not be unique to you and while all internal data is valuable, it is the unique elements that potentially have the greatest value. In fleet management you will have internal vehicle data but then your competitors will also have the same basic data. So you need to find the specific data that is different and only accessible by you.

For example, if you combine your specific Telematics data with your basic vehicle data then this combination creates a valuable proprietary data asset which you can use to deliver operational benefits such as maximising asset up time, pre-emptive maintenance and better cost management. Perhaps not the most exciting but incredibly valuable.

The world is changing.  Relevant, good quality data coupled with the ability to mine and extract insights is key to understanding the impact these changes will have on your business and finding the opportunities they present.

Data and analytics can be transformative. Understanding what you have, analysing your data at speed and making the resultant insights accessible is key to creating real value and competitive advantage.

The next part of this series will talk more specifically managing Risk in uncertain times.

If you want to know more about the transformative power of data or indeed have a project that you need support with, we’d be delighted to offer you a free Discovery consultation.

​If you’re open to that, please click here to contact us and we’ll be in touch to schedule a call.​​

Brendan Jayagopal

Founder & Managing Director. Blue Label Consulting