Out with the old, and in with the new?

Why you and your business should use this new financial year to look at your data

19 July 2024

A new financial year means new objectives, new projects, and new budgets. However, one part of the business that rarely gets given new thought to is your data landscape, in particular the need to spend time assessing the quality and quantity of your data that is so imperative to your decision making. For mid-market companies who are competing for market-share like never before, this is an even-more essential task that should be factored into any strategic review, and there is no better time to commence interrogating your data than the new financial year.

As attention turns to new strategies, new projects, and new budgets, the need to have clean, reliable and clear data and insights at your disposal to bring these to fruition and accurately assess your performance is imperative, for both the short-term and the long-term. So why is data not prioritised in the same manner as a new strategy? Or a new target market? Or a new set of objectives? There are of course several answers to these questions, and the answers are invariably quite nuanced. But, at the heart of it, data doesn’t get the same treatment is because it can be daunting, not to mention sometimes difficult to justify the investment where the outcome is hard to quantify. We understand that. Seeing immediate uplift in the very near term through a new marketing campaign? Or spending time sifting through messy data? Whilst we would always opt for the latter, we understand the former is far more attractive! As a mid-market company, you operate in a highly competitive space, and meeting short-term revenue targets is critical. But that does not mean you should be not paying attention to the growing mess that is your data. In fact, according to Experian, 72% of mid-market companies have data quality issues that directly impact decision-making and operational efficiency. At Pentify, we can help you with those issues.

Let us bring up some childhood memories! Remember as a kid, your parents would ask you to tidy your bedroom, only for you to ignore them for days (if not weeks) until your bedroom looked like it had been hit by a hurricane? That deprioritising of the cleaning resulted in two things. An inevitable and very time-consuming catch-up clean, and very angry parents! As you grew older, no doubt you began to realise that by incremental cleaning was far more efficient, not to mention it got mum off your back. Whilst this memory might be foreign to some, it is exactly the situation many companies find themselves in today. You are a growing mid-market company, you are bound to make some mess! You might even have your annual spring clean, where you can do a full stocktake of your data assets. But that won’t tackle the root cause, ensuring your data stays clean, consistent, and trustworthy.

As we move towards business strategies incorporating AI with an ever-increasing presence in our working life, a clean and well-managed data foundation is the difference between success and failure. So, when you are developing your new AI strategy for this financial year, your first question should be, have I cleaned my room lately? If you’re not asking yourself this question, then you’re in for a very painful and time-consuming clean down the track!

To find out how Pentify can deliver you clean and consistent insights in the short-term and the long-term, reach out today!