Leveraging Big Data in our Strategy Execution Journey

Data is an intangible asset. Big Data is what we do in order to store, compute and analyze all data available to deliver value for the organization. Value from data is originated from novel insights or the creation of products and services that utilize information as the basis to fulfill the needs of customers and also serve citizens in a city, eventually improving everyone's lives.

If you are like me and believe all this is true, then you should do something about that.

An important concept to understand regarding Big Data initiatives, is that we can start solving specific operational problems, and smoothly transform the business into a data-driven model, as you start seeing value for the organization.

It is crucial to demystify the impact of Big Data into Strategy, and a great way of doing it is to understand how can we link Big Data with your strategic planning and execution process, as you will see, Big Data should not be an IT driven discussion, Big Data should be very much in the mind of any Strategic Planning or in the agenda of every Chief Strategy Officer.

When you adopt Big Data as part of your strategy formulation or review, you will realize that every single KPI can be impacted by strategic programs that leverage Big Data.

It's applicable to all business perspectives. Let me clarify based on the most relevant ideas regarding linking Strategy Execution to Big Data.

1) Your strategy is divided into DRIVERS (enablers of organizational learning and growth, internal processes) and OUTCOMES (customers and financial returns). In a nutshell, what you do on your Drivers will determined your Outcomes. Capisce?

2) Therefore, the idea is simple: if you can predict your Outcomes (through your KPIs in the lowest granularity possible), you will be able to adjust your Drivers on the spot, making your organization way more agile by creating a Predictive Strategy Management Model.

3) While taking your KPIs to the next level, using Big Data to boost it, you can now tap into cause-effect relationship analysis through advanced analytics using complex algorithms that correlate your KPIs among strategic objectives (yes, Data Science stuff in practice)

With that, our beloved gurus who have been preaching cause-effect relationship of strategic objectives in a cascading model, will finally see a new wave of excitement in the strategy execution arena.

For instance, Big Data is addressing one of the main criticisms of the Balanced Scorecard methodology, that has been pointed out by many professionals, and is the weak relationship between cause and effect in the strategic objectives, as per a lack of reliable data, as this relationship is usually based in a set of assumptions and many times good will. Big Data is providing the “right vitamins” to your KPIs. How cool is that?

Well, the challenge is open. Let's continue this conversation while testing the concept with some organizations.

Drop me a message if you want to try the approach and become a pioneer with me on linking Strategy to Big Data!

One more thing, what components do I need in order to try this unthinkable approach?

a) Big Data Engine – where you basically store all data available from any period of time and use the new computation power to analyze and extract value out of all sorts of data regardless its volume, variety and velocity.

b) Predictive Analytics Engine – something primarily made for business users and that don't require PhDs or manual modeling to tap into the new mathematical models (yes, it exists today! in SAP it is a solution called SAP Infinite Insight, quite cool stuff)

c) Agile Data Visualization – something fancy and appealing for end users, where they could see the results in some sort of Infographics look & feel. Very modern!

d) last but not least, TRAIL & ERROR: with more computation power that enables real-time analysis of large datasets from every single KPI in the lowest level of granularity and frequency of data, you can now unlock the creative of your people and eventually, they will come up with something amazing that was never possible before BIG DATA.

Ps. this is a living article, where I will update as our experiments goes on... I'm super excited about my new horizons. I'd love to know your feedback and related ideas.