Data Assurance & Analytics

Take advantage of the power of data

Let's look at how to make the most of this opportunity

The pace of technology growth we have experienced in even the last decade has been staggering. This has created a whole host of new opportunities and improvements to our home and work lives - and the explosion of data is revolutionising businesses.

Organisations of every type are now expecting their business decisions to be based upon robust data analytics to support intuition and experience. Data-led insight can add business value to every part of the value chain and every area of business decision-making. However, diving in without knowing what you are dealing with is a recipe for disaster. How do you ensure your processes are adequate and you get the best value from your investments?

Data and Analytics - Today and Tomorrow

Key topics

Data management and governance
Improving trust in your data
Using operational data to drive business decisions
Data protection

Data management and governance

Data drives key business decisions, and for confidence and trust in that data you need effective data governance. But complex organisational models and one-size-fits-all policies often fail to manage what’s important. What’s needed, is a clearer picture. Managing the risk in data is essential, but great data governance goes far beyond this, and develops an environment which realises the full potential data can have for your business.

Improving trust in your data

We have more data now than ever before, and better tools for data analysis. Using data effectively can make the difference between success and failure in business. We all need to be thinking about data integrity and to be concerned about how we use data. Organisations which feel confident about the underlying data used by their systems are able to rely upon it to make decisions, highlight opportunities and identify and manage risks. They can be agile, because they feel comfortable with their data and know that it meets their business needs.

Using operational data to drive business decisions

In today’s competitive environment, businesses are under pressure to reduce costs while improving the effectiveness of their operational delivery – usually through optimising demand and supply across their value chain. Globalised and interconnected value chains create a level of complexity that requires sophisticated real time decision making. However, many teams are not armed with the level of insight required to make these decisions.

Data protection

As organisations of all types know, compliance with international privacy regulations has become increasingly challenging. Not to mention keeping up with the nonstop stream of changing technology and uses of data.

With the ability to transfer and exchange vast amounts of personal data across continents and around the globe in fractions of seconds, the need for legislative change is clear. The General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) is the modern age answer to ensuring all organisations processing personal data are held accountable for ensuring our fundamental right to the protection of personal data is upheld.

"Most organisations are currently using data to look backwards and describe what happened and why. A quarter are predicting what will or could happen, and the most sophisticated companies (just 13%) are using prescriptive approaches to determine what should happen and why."

Data & Analytics Survey 2016

I'm not sure how to embed data management as a sustained, strategic capability within my company

Fail to plan, plan to fail. You should govern information through one set of processes that manages the data creation and maintenance so that all users can sustain good governance through the same rigour. There needs to be data governance organisation structures and established policies and procedures in place to achieve this.

I'm not sure if I can really trust the data that I have

Rubbish in, rubbish out. If the data you have can't be trusted, the conclusions you draw may be flawed and the decisions you make might not be the right ones. Can you trust your data? If the answer is no, it's worth taking some time to cleanse the data you already have, and put the right processes in place to make sure any new data has the right structure.

I'm not sure where data usage fits into my strategy

Big decisions - powered by data. The explosion of digital technologies and the insights it presents has provided businesses with more data than they know what to do with. The challenge for many organisations is knowing how to collate and interpret the data to gain meaningful information that provides competitive advantage. Can you see the wood for the trees?

I need help working out what I need to do to be compliant

Comply or fall. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will impact every entity that holds or uses European personal data both inside and outside of Europe. GDPR is an opportunity to be embraced and a challenge to overcome to ensure compliance. In order to be ready for the GDPR, entities will need to set their vision, agree their strategy and constitute their structures for achieving data protection and privacy operational change and compliance.

How can we help?

Our Data Assurance & Analytics team can help you by:

Developing your Data Governance and Quality Framework
Mapping data flows through business processes
Discovering information within your data using our suite of technology and forensic tools
Answering questions you have about your business by using data

PwC's Global Data and Analytics Survey 2016: Big Decisions

To get a clear understanding of how business leaders approach decision making in their organisations, we used special software and a narrative-led methodology to see experiences that otherwise wouldn’t be captured in standard survey instruments.

Since May 2015, we have been collecting micro stories and other signifying data from 2,100 executives and managers. 256 of these are based in the UK. We wanted to understand the degree to which they see themselves as data-driven; their reliance on machine learning versus human judgement; their needs around speed and sophistication; and the limitations they face.

The UK and the Isle of Man are both ‘dabbling with data’. The majority of organisations are “data focused but not data centric” as one respondent describes it. Executives understand the importance of data and are using it to inform decisions, but continue to base their strategic decision on human judgement rather than machine algorithms, even when it comes to their most important, high value decisions.