6min. Lesezeit, Verfasst von: Ruxandra Ionescu

Data literacy is the ability to read, understand, analyse and question data.

Building data literacy in the business environment is important because we live in a changing world. Due to increasing networking and digitalisation, more and more data is created, which, among other things, provides information about aspects relevant to the company, reveals errors and paves the way for potential. Every process, decision or structure is based on interpreted data.

However, one is confronted with the following difficulties when integrating a functioning data competence:

• Nontransparent data culture leads to limited capacity to act:

The process of building a functioning data competence proves difficult due to an nontransparent corporate culture. Not every employee has access to certain data, so that this area of competence only falls to a few employees. The resulting data backlog is problematic. Because the data is separated into data silos, and as a consequence is not processed and interpreted across divisions, but only for the respective division/department, what leads to a loss of the holistic overview.

• Data expertise is not built up in-house:

In some cases, companies bring external data experts on board, what leads to higher costs. Another popular strategy is to outsource the area, which comes at a high cost as well and leads to data loss within the company.

• Outdated digital tools are still heavily used

Companies are still using outdated systems to maintain their data and extract information from it, following the pretext of “this is how we have always done it”. However, those companies are losing out on important digitization measures and thus also on market-gaining value creation potential. In addition, for employees working in data management data lists become less transparent and more erroneous due to the increasing data volume. The resulting data lists also become less transparent and more erroneous what leads to slow and erroneous decisions and in turn weakens the development of data competence.

The right tool for the right data to promote data literacy!

In addition to a suitable data culture in the company, the use of the right technology plays an essential role in building sustainable data competence. Data-based real-time monitoring solutions can provide far-reaching support, as they make data available in real time and can be used intuitively.

The conventional variant of data interpretation is mostly carried out by reporting in the form of Excel reports or by conventional business intelligence solutions, which do not work with current data and can only be used by experts.  This variant of data processing is usually very rigid and prone to errors, especially since data has to be collected and maintained manually. In addition, data from the previous period is collected and calculated in order to create a report. Measures are derived from them. The result is compared with the report for the next period. This method impairs decision-making, efficiency and profitability and prevents the development of sustainable data literacy in the company.

Data-based real-time tools, in comparison, work with current data that is collected and processed in real time and presented in the form of a clear report.

The information collected can thus be used to:

• Improve performance
• resource management
• optimized adaptation to customer needs

In addition, Real-time Monitoring Systems are scalable and can also be partially used by untrained staff, in the form of a self-service BI. Deviations can be indicated by integrated alerting systems. All these factors lead to a significant simplification of data interpretation in operations.

Thus it can be stated that real-time data contributes to the successful development of sustainable data competence in the business environment.

Conclusion

Data literacy has become indispensable in the era of rapidly growing digitalisation and is thus one of the most important characteristics of a functioning company. However, not every corporate culture is receptive to optimal data literacy, especially since either access to the acquisition of data literacy is denied and/or outdated technologies are used. Digital solutions such as data-based real-time tools pull in current data and process it into clear reports that provide a holistic view of various company-specific processes and operations. These aspects promote the ability of employees to read, understand, interpret and question Data.