HOW AN AFRICAN COMPANY CAN MOBILIZE
DATA MANAGEMENT TO GROW?
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By Andre Felix Bakehe
INTRODUCTION
In a context where the Canadian business environment is changing significantly, African companies also have significant room for improvement. These margins for improvement, essentially internal and organizational, actually represent significant growth reserves. Mastering data through data science is an avenue whose preferred destination is decision support, which itself brings growth.
Knowing the data directly or not related to the operation of a company is a fundamental first step.
Like any other activity, the life of a company drains with it a considerable amount of data of internal or external origin. The number and relevance of the data that can be collected is actually a first indicator of the complexity and the number of parameters to which a company is actually subject. This data is ultimately an indicator of what many phenomena, correlated or not, are taking place and are likely to impact the course of a company’s existence.
Internal data are those relating to the very operation of the company in its various subdivisions, such as sales, administration or operations. External Data type, on the other hand, is found in the very environment of the company and can come, for example, and in a non-limiting manner, from the specific sector of activity of the company, from macro/microeconomics, from demographics, geography, or even the identity and characteristics of its customers and partners.
Despite a context marked not only by the difficulty of collecting data, but also by the unavailability of a certain number of them, African companies should initiate the process and, above all, set up and/or improve data collection infrastructures. This is a fundamental first step.
Improving the quality of decision-making is in itself a growth driver for African businesses.
At the center of any company or organization, decision-making is not only one of the most recurrent activities that leaders and managers are confronted with on a daily basis, but it is also the most sensitive. The performance and therefore the growth of companies depend in large part on the correctness of the decisions taken.
Looking more closely at the foundations of a decision-making process, it is possible to suggest at the outset that a decision is very often based on objective or subjective considerations. The considerations categorized as subjective are those generally linked to the personal appreciation, feelings, or even the sociocultural background of the decision-makers. It is therefore always complex and perilous, by definition, to be able to act effectively and sustainably on this category.
The objective criteria for their part, understood as those based for example on laws or science, represent on the other hand those on which it is possible to operate effectively with measurable results in terms of business growth.
For several African companies, with constant volumes of activity and structures, the massive investment in improving the quality of decision-making in its objective foundations, aided in this by data science, is clearly an important growth reservoir.
Master the data to support decision-making is a growth driver.
Data directly or indirectly relating to a company, when they simply do not provide information on the latter’s state of health, are full of hidden information and lessons that should be decoded. In other words, the question is how far would a company be able to extract all the intelligent substance and the “messages” contained in the data relating to its activity.
Making wise decision within a company will increase the performance, and therefore it’s growth. The decision is an act of management, managing is among other things foreseeing and foreseeing is also predicting. Developing intelligence around data using data science is thus a way to not only understand and be able to analyze the past (via data analysis), but also be able to predict the future (via predictive analysis). Decision-making is therefore improved, thus creating suitable conditions for the growth of companies in general and African companies in particular.