In many organizations, data literacy has proven to enhance the results of their strategies. We have seen many times with various enterprises that if companies do not enhance the data literacy of their entire workforce, they will lose their competitive edge. A failure to improve the data literacy of an organization means that they will be unable to leverage essential business data resources to their advantage.
What does data literacy mean in organizations?
The first stage of data literacy in organizations is the ability of employees to read, write, and communicate with data in various contexts. This means that the employees would know how to access data critically, extract meanings from numbers, and be able to deduct actionable business values from the data. Employees that are specialists in certain core business segments are usually the ones that have the best ability to utilize insights from data to generate results.
Thus, it is very essential for everybody in an organization, to be able to access data and have the ability to understand and use the data. If your organization is data literate, you can experiment with data to discover new insights/opportunities and make fact-based decisions. The key to the future profitability of any organization is not in collecting data, but in inputting the data to use.
The importance of data literacy to organizations
Even though many organizations make money from data and the huge potential others stand to make, about 50% of enterprises do not have the necessary AI and data literacy skills to achieve the needed business value. Irrespective of the amount of data an organization might collect, it is not useful at any cost if this data is not put to work. you have to be able to analyze data to be able to get useful insights. The insights obtained from the data are used to generate business value.
Based on the statistical output of a recently conducted survey on enterprise data literacy, it has been proven that low data literacy in organizations is one of the primary hindrances of the growth of a company. For organizations to combat this ugly trend, they will need to create practical initiatives to minimize the data efficiencies of their employees. This can be done by provisional providers of data governance services. Many organizations fast track their data literacy programs by outsourcing the task to a service provider.
The benefits of data literacy to organizations
When implemented, data literacy across an enterprise leads to a wave of development across each department of the organization. This leads to general business growth. Data literacy when properly implemented will only propel success and forward momentum. Everyone in an organization should know why data literacy needs to be improved. Apart from that, the entire workforce should be able to apply data to their daily activities to make excellent decisions and yield favourable outcomes. Data when applied aptly, can be instrumental in making employees achieve their business objectives, do their job effectively, and contribute to the general performance of their company. Then again, if everyone in a company can access data, there will be a generally streamlined operation and enhanced business efficiency. This is because employees with core business specialist skills will never rely on data scientists to interpret any given data.
