Data In Business Transformation

There is much talk today about big data, analytics, and digital transformation. It can be easy to get lost in buzzwords, but the truth is that every company has tremendous opportunities to unlock the value of its data stores.

In fact, out of everything I've done in my over three decades in IT, it has always been projects around data where I have seen the greatest transformation within a business.

Traditional Method of Businesses

The first time I saw this was almost 20 years ago; I joined a supplementary staffing business where workers were put out to client sites and submitted timesheets; these timesheets became the basis for payroll and billing. However, both had a complex series of rules.

Payroll was not simply an hourly rate; it differed based on the schedule – day, afternoon, night – and attracted allowances for working in certain conditions.

So, the Financial Controller spent one day a month calculating the margin report for each branch, identifying profitability – the number we all want to see where both direct and indirect costs are extracted from revenue, leaving something left over.

Of course, it might also identify unprofitability; by then, it could be up to seven…