Readwrite.com: Global Managing Director at Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work Says Analytics can Help Companies Unlock Billions With the Value of Code

“The biggest challenge faced by living, breathing business leaders is not something that can be solved with the scary math of a capital-asset pricing model,” writes Paul Roehrig. “The problem keeping most leaders awake at night is nearly always some form of, “How do I identify what information really matters to my business? How do I separate signal from noise?”

Roehrig, Malcolm Frank, Cognizant’s Executive Vice President of Strategy, and Ben Pring, Director, Cognizant’s Center for the Future, are the authors of Code Halos: How the Digital Lives of People, Things, and Organizations are Changing the Rules of Business. Excerpts from the article:

“We all know our company has valuable data, but we don’t know where it is, what to do about it, or whether it’s worth doing anything. Most decision makers stay stuck because there’s so little justification for why you should divert focus to what often feels like some sort of science project.

In this context, enterprise data starts to feel like that kitchen drawer we never clean out because we don’t really have a compelling reason. We don’t know what lock that old key fits into, but maybe we’ll need it someday, so there it sits, unlocking nothing.

But a path forward is finally coming into focus, and it’s almost alarmingly simple. Winning companies are creating business value by building a richer understanding of customers, products, employees, and partners. They are successfully extracting business meaning from a torrent of data to drive performance.

We say this with confidence because—with the help of the Oxford Economics group and futurist Thornton May—we studied over 300 companies to understand the real-world economic impact of making real-world business meaning out of data, and the impact couldn’t be more critical.

So what to do tomorrow? Every company is different, so there is no single “right” answer, but there are a few simple tactics companies can start tomorrow.

Become A "Meaning Maker" (Or Pay The Price): Companies that use data to connect customers, partners, devices, and their brands can thrive. Executives should look at their businesses and decide where to apply the new economics of meaning-making in the near-term.

It's All About The SMAC Stack: Social, mobile, analytics and cloud (SMAC) technologies are coalescing into a new IT architecture that can help rewire virtually every business. Data from mobile devices, social tools, and cloud-enabled solutions contains massive value if de-coded and harnessed. Business process owners and technology leaders should be proactive about finding ways to leverage these tools

Narrow Your Focus: Focus on a specific business process. Whether it’s your underwriting process, clinical drug trials, wealth management service, supply chain or customer relationship management process, target work that shapes at least 10% of your costs or revenues.

Don’t Overlook Your Small-Data Problems: You don’t always need a billion records to derive business meaning. Start by exploring the data you do have. Get the right people in the room and dig deeply into what you have. This will help break the inertia and start people thinking about how to make business meaning.

Build A Business Analytics Ecosystem: Winning based on knowledge requires a new set of skills. Savvy decision-makers know that building an ecosystem of consultants and service providers can help deliver the right capabilities to the company.

The power of insight is starting to shape markets and disrupt business processes. The companies that ultimately win will be those that de-code the new economics of meaning-making. They will reimagine work, see business processes and customers as sources of insight, and find ways to keep human judgment and values embedded in real-world business decisions.

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