4 decision-critical data sources

If strategy is all about making difficult decisions, then data is critical for making the right decision at the right time. But is all data useful?

Based on our research and experience, Dr. Dellermann and myself, have identified four data sources that have the most impact on your strategic decisions:

• Customer experience. How are your customers behaving? Although customer jobs and desired outcomes are usually stable over time, that doesn't mean their means are stagnant as well!
• Expert knowledge. How are your people sharing knowledge? Just because Bob knows something, doesn't mean a lot if no one can access his expertise. Understanding what your people know, and making their expertise heard and accessible is critical for rapid decision making.
• Operational data. How is your business performing? Easiest data to access and collect, as it already resides in your systems (think ERP, CRM, emails, etc.).
• Ecosystem data. How is the world around you changing? Simply put, your suppliers, competition, new technologies or changing macroeconomic conditions will influence the performance of your strategic actions.

Horizontal axis indicates if the data source is primarily telling us something about our business or the context. Vertical axis delineates between leading and lagging data. The former are signals of the incoming changes, while the latter are historical measures of what has happened.

There is no single best source, rather, it is when all four are tapped into at once that we are able to make a truly informed strategic decision.

Copyright © 2021 Bruno Pešec and Dominik Dellermann. All rights reserved.