Information Technology

<p style="text-align: justify;">If the business is to be vibrant and thriving in Africa today, it must incorporate or embrace information technology in its workspace. Technology has made it easy to process, visualize and interpret business data.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Insights are refined products that would help key stakeholders use data-driven decision-making to strategize for the business's success. The forthcoming technological innovation brings with it extraordinary opportunities for industries that are well prepared.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">But what information is needed by businesses to make an informed decision? How can data be best processed, analyzed, and portrayed to make sense for decision making? The time to digitize information for better business growth is now.&nbsp;</p><h2 style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">How Can we use Data to Make an Informed Business Decision?</span></h2><p style="text-align: justify;">Most companies struggle, and the turnaround time to make decisions is slow. Why? This could be because of how they have stored and structured their data.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Does it mean that all businesses digitalize their data? No, we are still in the error whereby critical important business decisions in the various industrial sectors are not made based on fact. When I say facts, I mean prosperous and well-managed data.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Data is one of the most valuable resources any business could have, whether it&rsquo;s for your marketing or sales teams, business expansion, staff production, and motivation.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">How would you know when your business is making a profit or loss?&nbsp;</p><p style="text-align: justify;">How can you be data smart to maximize profit against your competitors?&nbsp;</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Business decisions are now more data-driven, so the companies that are collecting and analyzing the data are poised to rocket past the competition. Are you a data-driven company? How well structured is your data?</p><h2 style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">What do you Mean by Smart Data?</span></h2><p style="text-align: justify;">&rdquo;Smart data&rdquo;. Having the biggest data in the world does not guarantee your business success. Your business success is based on the data subset (smart data) you have refined from the big data.&nbsp;</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Many businesses are bleeding; they have unhealthy junk data in their database, which is not healthy for business growth. In the pursuit of business growth, competitive advantage, and efficiencies, companies are investing heavily in the technological way they tap business intelligence from data they have collected from various sources in which they do business.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">You can be one of the top 10 companies that are data-driven; we can also help you filter out and restructure your techniques to collect data that will differentiate you from men and boys. When your subset data is smart, then insights retrieved from it will be substantial.&nbsp;</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Remember, garbage in, garbage out.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><em>This article was contributed by our expert <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/collince-dundo-a39b493b/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Collince Dundo</a>.</em></span></p><h3 style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Frequently Asked Questions Answered by Collince Dundo</span></h3><h2><span style="font-size: 12pt;">1. How can data improve decision making?</span></h2><p style="text-align: justify;">Data is important in many different aspects such as marketing, sales, business development etc. It helps us to understand the trajectory of the business and track the profit or loss and take necessary actions.</p><h2 style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">2. What do you think is the role of big data in business decision making?</span></h2><p style="text-align: justify;">The data with high information density is required to separate out the subset or Smart data that the business could utilize for it&rsquo;s decision making.</p><h2 style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">3. What are the benefits of data management?</span></h2><p style="text-align: justify;">Data management can help in improving the quality of data, reducing the time and cost, preventing data duplication, and increasing data accuracy which leads to well informed decision making.</p>