Understand the Value of Data and How It Helps Businesses

by | Published on Jul 5, 2019 | Business Process Outsourcing

In this digital world, document scanning service is in high demand. This is because business organizations are converting their data into digital format for safety, better access and quick retrieval. Data is a collection of facts and statistics that is specific and organized for a purpose. Successful business leaders rely on valuable data that helps them make the right business decisions. Data also helps to understand customers and markets.

Businesses use cases to derive data and operationalize them. The data should be fresh and up-to-date if it is to be used with the best effect. Another important aspect of the collection of data is data layering where data is organized into several logical layers and then employing a logic by which to stack these layers and generate more meaningful data. Once the organization has gathered all the data, it has to be processed to make sense. The first step is to enrich data with the knowledge of domain experts and human expertise is also important to make data useful.

Understand the Value of Data and How It Helps Businesses
Better Decisions with Quality Data

Every business has data about customers, user experience, traffic, trends, market research and so on. All these data are necessary to draw insights that would help in the growth of the company and with actual number and information organizations can make better business decisions. For any organization to grow, it needs marketing strategies and the strategy begins with basic demographic data. The data can be used for pricing, churn prevention and cross and up selling.  It also tracks and reviews data from business processes that helps pinpoint performance breakdowns so you can understand each part of the process and identify which steps need to be optimized and which are performing well. These data also helps business to achieve the following things:

  • Find new markets and customers
  • Improve customer retention
  • Improve marketing efforts
  • Predict sales trends
  • Track social media interactions
  • Enhance customer service

Dehumanized and Humanized Data

A recent article in Health Data Management discussed the nature of dehumanized versus humanized data. In the United States, the standard approach is to consider data as dehumanized, in other words, data is just electronically stored information. Data cannot be fabricated, and you can never lie about data but for legal purposes you can make use of it. This has led to the growth of Big Data, mass analytics and algorithm. Companies can analyze the data, re purpose it, create new forms of value and new methods for researching customers and growing the business.  In the humanized approach, businesses are forced to recognize that the source of all data is a person with autonomy and rights.

In the European Union, data is regarded as an extension of an individual.  They adopt a humanized approach towards data. A person may have voluntarily shared his/her data to a company for its use, but that data will always belong to them because it is part of who they are. Therefore, it is important to understand the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and stay compliant with it to avoid running into legal trouble.

Keeping this in mind, in the US also, following pre GDPR methods and practices will not be enough. The approach of handling data should be changed. There should be a balance between the value of data and the rights of the data owner/subject. There should be close and continuous monitoring of how your business gathers and uses data as well as how it interacts with the people who provide data.

Any business, be it small, medium or large generates data that is important for them to create revenue. Paper-based data must be converted into digital format, preferable with the support of a document scanning company. Digitization is a very efficient way of handling huge volumes of data but there is always the threat of the data being hacked or misused. It is important therefore for organizations to have in place all necessary security measures to ensure data protection.

Recent Posts

What are the Challenges Involved in Microfilm Scanning?

What are the Challenges Involved in Microfilm Scanning?

Many businesses organizations still have valuable data stored in microfilms and microfiche. Poor storage can cause deterioration of microfilm and loss of valuable data. Microfilm scanning services can provide the solution. Scanning microfilms helps in preserving and...

Share This