We find ourselves in the age of rapid digital transformation, ground-breaking technologies emerge everyday revealing opportunities and demands that didn’t even exist as little as a decade ago. These “blue ocean” businesses have transformed all facets of business, including customer services and business model structuring.

In the past, technology solution providers almost exclusively worked with the IT departments of the business they were deploying or building the solution for. In recent times, fueled by innovative thinking and approach to problem-solving, the reach of technology solutions has permeated to departments and processes like finance, HR and logistics as direct solutions requiring minimal intervention from the in house IT team. This is because the accessibility of technology has enabled a thriving digital culture which can be a source of competitive advantage across all business functions – sales, manufacturing, logistics, marketing, etc.

More importantly, access to robust technology is also no longer exclusive to large enterprises. Commercialization, outsourcing, and good connectivity have driven down costs, making technology accessible to businesses of all sizes, across the globe. While the specific technologies that can be leveraged for business growth will vary across organizations, there is a major common theme that all business leaders can consider - DATA.

With the relentless digitization of business and society, we now have access to extraordinarily large amounts of data. Transactional data (from business processes via ERP, CRM, HRMS, POS, and similar systems), Social data (Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, etc) and Operational data (from connected devices and IoT systems) can be leveraged to provide better customer experiences and improve operational efficiency. The key is not just to gather data, but to exploit it with analysis and insight. From an organizational perspective, this can require experts from multiple disciplines working together to form the structure(business intelligence) needed to make sound decisions in any business domain.

Inioluwa Oludele is a Digital Marketing Specialist with Excite Panacea Limited an Information Technology Hub focused on Creating Value for Businesses Through Technology.