Every business is now a data business. Data is a key strategic asset today whether you’re a large international conglomerate or a locally owned, family-run business. If you don’t have an effective data strategy—or one at all—your company is missing out on the huge potential business value data offers.

1. The 6 Biggest
Data Strategy Mistakes
Every Company Must Avoid

2. © 2019 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Title
Text
IntroductionIntroduction
Every business is now a data business. Data is a key strategic asset today
whether you’re a large international conglomerate or a locally owned, family-
run business. If you don’t have an effective data strategy—or one at all—your
company is missing out on the huge potential business value data offers. To
help you get on the right track and avoid common pitfalls, here are the 6
biggest data strategy mistakes every company must avoid.
The 6 Biggest Data Strategy Mistakes
Every Company Must Avoid

3. © 2019 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Starting with an outdated business strategy
The world is changing quickly and a business strategy that hasn’t evolved to be relevant
for the 4th Industrial Revolution won’t be effective. Your data strategy should support a
business strategy that’s right and relevant to today’s world. It makes no sense to spend
time and resources on collecting and analysing data in support of an out-of-date business
strategy. Not only will you not get to where you need to be, but you will waste time and
resources trying to get there.

4. © 2019 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Not starting with your business
goals and challenges
There are many ways and reasons to analyse data but they aren’t all important
to you achieving your business goals or helping you solve a business challenge.
Too many companies develop their data strategy around use cases that are
interesting or easy to implement rather than ones that get them to their goal.
First, be clear on what business goal or challenge you’re trying to overcome.
Then, figure out how you can use data to help you get there.

5. © 2019 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Not defining measures of success
How will you determine if your data strategy is successful? If you haven’t
defined key performance indicators (KPIs) for your data strategy that link to a
specific goal, it will be impossible to track and review your progress. It’s
important that any data initiative has a business case with corresponding KPIs
that the initiative will impact. This will help your organisation track progress and
ultimately know if you achieved your objective or not.

6. © 2019 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Only considering the technical costs and not
budgeting for other critical items
Yes, there are technical costs to deploy a data strategy, but many companies forget to
budget for items outside of technical costs. There is a significant amount of change
required to get a data project off the ground—many companies gravely underestimate
that. From changing the culture in the organisation to be a culture where decisions can be
made based on data rather than gut instinct or by manager approval as well as training
staff to collect the right data and understand data quality requirements, firms must budget
for skills development and training and people and change management on top of
budgeting for technical costs. Be sure your budgeting process is comprehensive.

7. © 2019 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Only considering internal data and traditional,
structured data
Today, data comes in many more forms than just databases and spreadsheets. Much of
the growth of data can be attributed to unstructured data including photos, sound
recordings, text files and more. A solid data strategy needs to account for structured and
unstructured data in order to yield robust insights. There are internal sources of data that
each organisation collects, but external sources of data including from data repositories,
governments and data brokers shouldn’t be overlooked and can be insightful for your
business.

8. © 2019 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Not considering the ethical, privacy and legal
issues around data
At the onset of any data project, proper data governance needs to be in place.
Considerations for how to use data ethically as well as the legal and privacy issues of data
use need to be defined. Consumer trust is paramount. Consumers must feel confident that
you will use their data safely and that they will gain some tangible value for letting you
use their data. The importance of determining
data access rights, security, ethics, privacy and how to ensure data quality
cannot be underestimated.

9. © 2019 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
The 6 Biggest Data Strategy Mistakes
Every Company Must Avoid
A good data strategy is essential for today’s businesses. It’s a key element to
understanding how to use data to achieve your company’s strategic objectives and it’s
built from determining your company’s three to five data use cases. These use cases will
be different for every company, but regardless, they should align with your business
strategy.
You might also be interested in these articles:
7 Things Every Business Must Include In A Data Strategy
How To Develop A Data Strategy – With Handy Template
How To Define A Data Use Case – With Handy Template
Or my book: Data Strategy: How To Profit From A World Of Big Data, Analytics And
The Internet Of Things

10. © 2017 Bernard Marr , Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
© 2018 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Bernard Marr is an internationally best-selling author, popular keynote speaker, futurist, and a
strategic business & technology advisor to governments and companies. He helps
organisations improve their business performance, use data more intelligently, and
understand the implications of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data,
blockchains, and the Internet of Things.
LinkedIn has ranked Bernard as one of the world’s top 5 business influencers. He is a frequent
contributor to the World Economic Forum and writes a regular column for Forbes. Every day
Bernard actively engages his 1.5 million social media followers and shares content that
reaches millions of readers.
Visit The
Website
© 2017 Bernard Marr , Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
© 2019 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Bernard Marr is an internationally best-selling author, popular keynote speaker, futurist, and a
strategic business & technology advisor to governments and companies. He helps
organisations improve their business performance, use data more intelligently, and
understand the implications of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data,
blockchains, and the Internet of Things.
LinkedIn has ranked Bernard as one of the world’s top 5 business influencers. He is a frequent
contributor to the World Economic Forum and writes a regular column for Forbes. Every day
Bernard actively engages his 1.5 million social media followers and shares content that
reaches millions of readers.
Visit The
Website

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