Business requires a data-driven culture to ensure better fact-based decision-making that can lead to increased revenue, says Isme Oosthuizen, head of business intelligence (BI) at IZAZI.
"To drive a data-driven culture, you need to do the following: give staff access to data so they are able to make decisions based on facts, communicate the right data and utilise productivity and analytical tools," says Oosthuizen.
She will join other BI subject matter experts at the ITWeb Business Intelligence 2014 Summit, next week, to discuss understanding the value in masses of data and instilling a data-driven culture within companies.
She says addressing "dataphobia" in the workplace can be achieved through an agile approach. "This can be done through focusing on smaller datasets instead of one big mass of data." Significant successes have been achieved by dividing up implementations into "sprints" themed per business function, and moving forward by "continuously interacting with the data, learning from past sprints and applying newly gained knowledge to the next sprint".
There has been an increase in the uptake of agile technologies by local corporates in recent times, says Oosthuizen. "The South African market has suffered from failed reporting implementations, where the users do not adopt BI after implementation. With an agile approach, BI becomes more entrenched within the business and projects have higher user adoption and success rates on BI and reporting projects."
Commenting on the issues facing the BI industry, she says research has already shown there will be too few people with deep analytical skills to fill the demand of big data jobs in the US by 2018.
Oosthuizen will address these and other issues during her presentation at the ITWeb Business Intelligence 2014 Summit, in Johannesburg, taking place from 25-27 March. Click here to access the programme for the event and to book before registration closes.