EMS Data Advisory Team

Is It Time for Your Business to Invest in Data Advisory Services?

With the sudden easy access to user data worldwide, data advisory services have suddenly leaped ahead regarding how many businesses leverage them. So much so that we saw over a 50% increase between 2019 and 2021 alone. While you may have heard of other companies using them, do you know if you are ready to invest your time and efforts into the analytics and strategies they provide?

Below, explore whether your business is in a position to accept and use the recommendations data advisory and governance provides. Discover practical steps to help you prepare your company to explore and overcome some of your data challenges.

Understanding The Role of Data Advisory and Governance Services in Your Business

Before you decide if you need to consider data advisory services, you should ensure you fully understand what they provide.

These businesses offer expert consultation to help you optimize and leverage the data you collect as you run your business. Their advice may include how to:

Make the data more accessible

Leverage the data

Discover correlations & causations in your data

Find tools that can help you analyze the data

Make decisions based on the data

The data strategies you can develop following working with such a business can help you gain insights into challenges you have or are likely to encounter. Also, this service can help you detect, analyze, and overcome potential risks using your existing resources.

It is not only large enterprises that may need or utilize such an asset, either. Small or medium businesses do not always have either expertise or time to make such analyses. SMBs who work with a data advisory service can thus often get the competitive advantages they sorely need to excel.

A common myth is that these services can be too expensive for an SMB to leverage. However, the potential ROI these services can offer far outweighs any expense after the initial investment. As such, the benefits a company like EMS consulting offers can help you take the next step to a new level of success and a foundation step towards utilizing artificial intelligence for your business.

Identifying Your Business’s Data Maturity Level

One of the things you need to work out first is whether your business’s data has reached a critical mass of quantity and quality. After this point, you should be able to use it for analysis.

To determine this, a data advisory consultant will use a maturity model. Several models exist from different companies, but each one looks at several factors, often including:

Data governance refers to your company’s policies and procedures for managing data. It aligns with data architecture, which measures the scalability and flexibility of your digital data organization and storage solution. Data governance also relates to the hardware and software infrastructure underpinning your data efforts.

Data quality relates to how accurate and complete the data is.

Data integration describes how well you can combine data from different sources. It aligns with your data analytics capabilities, which are how well you can analyze your data and your existing legacy of insight gathering.

In many cases, the advisory service will also analyze your company’s:

However, the above list is not exhaustive, and different advisors may leverage each differently. A high-quality data advisory service will tailor their advice to ensure it is relevant to your specific company, giving you actionable steps to improve your practices.

If necessary, you can often analyze your existing business limitations regarding data. Doing this lets you discuss your needs with a data advisory service with a more rounded view.

Common Business Challenges That Data Advisory Services Can Solve

The list of data advisory benefits below will help you understand if your business can utilize such a service effectively. As such, the following are some of the more common challenges a robust data analysis method can help with:

Poor Customer Insights

Not understanding the nature of your customers means targeting a market niche will be much more complicated.

Expert data advisors can use your existing data to build customer segments based on various factors and analyze each customer category’s behavior separately. You can then use this to create tailored marketing efforts for each area instead of aiming for broad appeal.

Inefficient Operations

Not having the information necessary to pivot your company safely means any change you make comes with significant risks.

Leveraging business data solutions instead means you can optimize every aspect of your company through time-series data analytics. You can look for patterns in your business that lead to growth or stagnation and then ensure you always focus on the events that ensure continued success.

Missing Market Opportunities

A lack of knowledge about your market and the data you have on it will prevent you from knowing when potential advantages are likely to appear. 

Instead, investing in data services means they can offer you ways to predict market trends and help you be ready for when opportunities arise.

What to Expect from Data Advisory Services

If you are considering investing in data services, you should understand what working with them looks like.

Firstly, you should expect several meetings in which they will assess and analyze your existing processes and data. After this, you should receive a detailed report on what they can specifically do for you and set expectations. After this, they will:

  • Align your data collection with your business goals

  • Set up an analytics framework that integrates with your internal system

  • Develop a clear set of actionable steps

If you want to be the one to take the reins, they can instead advise your internal team on how to handle the process themselves.

Empower Strategic Decision-Making Today

Data advisory services play a pivotal role in helping organizations like yours better use the data they have. They can give you practical guidance on advancing your data strategy and leveraging it for your benefit. Collaborating in this way can also mitigate many strategic risks you may face during business. Partnering with experts like EMS Consulting will ensure you receive tailored solutions and expert advice to help you accelerate your use of data. So, contact us today to discuss your needs and take your next step toward success.