Find out why data is the new oil of the 21st century

Data is increasingly described as the “new oil” of the 21st century. Few would argue the point that data is a valuable asset. However, in an unrefined state, data cannot really be used.

In Hong Kong, where service industries like banking & finance, retail, logistics, manufacturing and others, data has taken on an important role in the fast paced decision making that increasingly determines success or failure. In fact, in Hong Kong, as elsewhere around the world, data has acquired the status of a core business asset. The premise is simple: data is differentiator that can mean a competitive advantage.

Every day, Hong Kong executives in a wide range of industries spend time mining, and interpreting business data gathered from a wide range of sources: sales reports, customer databases, industry reports, market forecasts, or even places like Facebook status updates, Sina Weibo posts, and tweets.

Many forward-looking businesses in the city have already begun to take advantage of a technology called business intelligence (BI), which can be understood as a business analytics technology capable of transforming raw data into meaningful business insights.

The technology is grounded in the idea that information can change the world. By abstracting the way we explore data, BI solutions make it easier to identify patterns, draw insights and develop meaningful conclusions. Simply put, BI promises to help business make better informed decisions.

BI can handle large volumes of information to help identify and develop new opportunities. With the new technology, business data can be analyzed and presented in useful reports and spreadsheets based on predefined paths.

Yet demanding and impatient business users are often frustrated by the generally clumsy and time consuming experience of workplace computing and see earlier generations of BI as failing to provide the user-friendly and flexible solutions they need and have come to expect from daily use of Google or other search engines.

Several questions are typically heard from legacy BI system users in Hong Kong: “Why can't I search my enterprise documents as easily as I use Google to search the Web? Why can't I look up my business information as naturally as I navigate Wikipedia? Why is finding a new report so awkward compared to searching for new apps on the App Store?”

What they are asking is: “Why do we have better information technology at home than we do in the office? Shouldn’t advanced business analytics used at the office be more user-friendly and flexible than consumer technology that we use at home?”

Traditional BI is just not meeting the needs of businesses today. In the competitive, fast moving environment in which businesses operate, the legacy BI system no longer meets the demands of modern usage where critical decisions are time sensitive. Users want flexibility and immediacy in BI, not a time lag every time new information is required for businesses to make critical decisions.

As a new breed of more accessible, easy to use analytics has become available, offering an alternative to traditional Business Intelligence software, business users are discovering that anyone in the organization can now contribute. Users no longer need to depend on an IT department and a time consuming process to get answers to pressing business questions often waiting days for a turnaround. The new user driven Business Discovery approach is enabling everyone in company to create value and discover new business models. Innovative Hong Kong companies, MassMutual Asia and Crown Worldwide Group all have seen the results and understand that leveraging their own data is now critical for their success.

Forbes Magazine recently highlighted the fact that retailers worldwide are looking to mine their data resources to boost profits. Fast fashion retailer Zara, for example, has been singled out in the press as one company that is on a fast learning curve when it comes to making the most of this newfound data resource. It delivers new products twice each week to more than 1,700 stores worldwide. This adds up to more than 10,000 new designs each year! How does Zara surpass its well-known competitors to become the world's largest fast fashion retailer? It took innovative thinking that looked beyond sales to customers’ behavioral data, and, of course, rigorous analysis.

The next wave of BI emphasizing user-driven analytics, or “business discovery” also enables businesses to spread insights right to the edges of their organization, enabling every employee to do their jobs smarter and faster than ever. Making discoveries by looking into stacks of business data is no longer a privilege for “data scientists” as every worker in Hong Kong today should, in principle, be able to access and use business discovery tools to leverage their company’s own data as well as globally available Big Data. Businesses that fail to empower employees with business analytics tools to help them interact with data and do to their jobs smarter and faster, run the risk of missing out on discoveries that could change a company’s course to be more efficient, productive and profitable.