Johannesburg, 21 Apr 2022
Data and analytics are the key accelerants in organisational transformation efforts, but many organisations are challenged in achieving real value from data.
This is according to experts addressing a webinar on turning data into value with Google Cloud last week. The webinar, entitled Turn data into value with Google Cloud: Reimagine the possibilities for your data, was hosted by Google Cloud in collaboration with ITWeb. The event outlined how organisations can harness Google Cloud to unlock the value of their data, with speed, scale, security and AI built in, to gain real-time insights and create data-driven revenue streams.
Manav Daby, customer engineer, Smart Analytics at Google Cloud Africa, said: “Organisations have had to relook at the way they do business and give customers a better customer experience, and data plays a vital role in doing this. According to IDC, the data and AI market will be worth over $500 billion by 2024. But at the same time, only 24% of companies are able to realise tangible value from data.”
Daby said a key hurdle in the way of achieving tangible value from data was siloed and legacy systems. "Many enterprises have a huge amount of legacy infrastructure sitting on-premise. Many are using technology first built 20 or even 30 years ago. As we try to break down silos and do new things with data, we realise that this older technology can’t scale fast enough to manage the volumes, variety and velocity of data we have. Traditional data warehouses create bottlenecks that hinder business transformation,” he said.
“Businesses need actionable insights from their data wherever it resides. Google’s approach is to deliver a 360-degree view of the business data by breaking down silos,” he said. This allows them to become situationally aware of, and responsive to, real-time business events; and achieve data-driven decision making across the organisation and gain prescriptive and predictive insights faster with robust data security and governance built in.
Daby noted that while Google Cloud delivered all the tools organisations need to gain real value from their data, organisations should not neglect people and processes in their transformational projects. “It’s common in many large projects that when new technology is introduced, legacy tools, projects and skills aren’t taken on the journey to these new projects. You tend to get people left behind, or departments that become resentful. The people and the processes need to be a priority too,” he said.
Polls of webinar participants revealed that 25% said data insights were difficult to come by due to data volume and velocity issues; 41% said their data pipelines were functional but could be better optimised; 25% said business analysts had free access to data in a simplified manner; and only 8% said insights were integrated into their workflows and they could take action on most data within the same tool.
On the question of where they saw data making the biggest impact on customer experiences, 50% said better customer service; 25% said new product innovations; 16% said better product recommendations.
Juan Urrego, engineering director for the Data Division at Takealot.com, outlined how Takealot is using Google Cloud to gain tangible value from its fast-growing big data volumes. Takealot, the leading e-commerce retailer in South Africa, is a group including Superbalist and MrD Food. Urrego said the group had lacked a single version of the truth and had been challenged in accessing and sharing data across divisions.
"With Google Cloud, Takealot has achieved a real-time single version of the truth for the whole group. We consolidate everything in a single place with push-based architecture, for real time high quality data, easy access to necessary information, and the numbers always match. It has democratised data and is changing the way we do things at Takealot,” he concluded.
Useful links
This webcast is now on-demand, should you like to view it. Use this link to enter the webcast at any time.
To assist you in turning data into value click here to access whitepapers and relevant content hosted in the Google Cloud Content Hub.
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