Empowering Data to tell the Story
We may have evolved to a stage where data and analytics reign supreme in the business environment. It has become a passé to claim that an organization is entirely data-driven. But, instead of simplifying matters, it has simply scaled up the complexity involved in decision-making. Ironically, while enterprises may boast of employing trending technologies, the enterprise-workers are taxed with herculean data-crunching exercises that make no wiser than what they were before.
Data isn’t the problem, data overload is. We arrive at a dystopian vision where the workers are overwhelmed by the over-abundance of data while are simultaneously ill-equipped of making sense of it.
We have it all: the reports, the analytics, the sophisticated data visualizations, and to top it all, data-rich systems. Yet, something’s seriously wrong somewhere. Is it about going too far down the slippery slope of technology-intrusion while eroding scope of human intervention?
Eventually, what’s the point in amplifying technology capabilities if they don’t augment human intelligence required for smart, swift decision-making.
So, what’re enterprises missing?
What’s the Story?
What do you remember about a novel or cinema you enjoyed long ago? The particulars of geography? Perhaps. The familiarization of setting? Vaguely. The portrayal of characters? Faint impression. The topography of plot? Clear at summary-level.
But you do recall one thing just fine: The Story.
Stories retain the clamor amidst our data-frenzied world because they have been the most effective tool to transmit human experience. People make the sense of the whole, have the big picture deeply imprinted in their minds, and the lessons derived are strongly imbued in our hearts.
While singing the paeans of data-driven approach, we’ve largely renegaded the human experience out of the equation. This is surprising, because the very categorization of data and its advanced forms are based on their proximity with human grasp.
Data >> Information >> Knowledge >> Insight
The above informs a progressively refined view of the value it brings to the human.
Why, then, have we abandoned the human-centric philosophy in our enterprise solutions!
When data tells you the story
Part of what makes decision-making an extremely cumbersome task for business-users is that the data barely lends itself to narrative-building. Data can no longer be a passive onlooker that relies on the analytics-engines to become useful. Instead, the data must be socialized to tell the story to the user. The data is thus transformed into an active participant in the business process, paving our way for smart and swift decision-making.
This shift to data-telling-the-story is analogous to the transition from data in tabular format to data visualization (charts & graphs).
Socializing Data opens the door to a new world of possibilities, because it makes data useful and impactful.
When storytelling is employed to share insights, it guides the user and builds a data-rich logical case for a decision. The socialized data makes snapshot-reporting possible and the user – instead of grappling with various parts and aspects of data – gets the paint the full picture with flourish.
Imagine a workplace where users wrestle with value-added opportunities, instead of getting tied up with data-crunching. This is what socializing data achieves; it weaponizes the data into decision-critical insights which in turn lead to data-driven decision-making coupled with human comprehension.
But, data telling you the story is only half the game in today’s collaboration-driven world. The point is how to harness the power of storytelling in the collaboration ecosystem. That’s for the next in the series.