Opportunities For Every Business?
How To Identify Data

© 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Today, what differentiates a market-leading company from an also-ran is often the
way that it is using data. Data is often referred to as “the oil of the information age”
as it powers revolutionary concepts such as artificial intelligence (AI) and the
internet of things (IoT). Successful businesses use data to make decisions about
their products and services, to streamline and create efficiencies in their internal
processes, and to understand and their customers in more depth. Many even work
out how to turn their data itself into new revenue streams, with transformative
effects on the business.
Every business leader knows they need to be working with data, but with so many
potential efficiencies and exciting use cases, it can be difficult to know where to
start.

© 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
I have a straightforward process for this that I take my clients through when we sit
down to consider how they could be using data more effectively.
Of course, every business should already understand its strategic goals. What are
the most important things that need to be done for the business to grow and
succeed? Everyone in the organization should be aware of these. Are we looking for
profits? Growth? A better understanding of our customers? To reduce customer
churn or wastage in our processes?
So when it comes to identifying data use cases, the best jumping-in point is to
brainstorm initiatives that can help us meet one (or more) of these goals.

© 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
High-level use cases
At the top level, there are six areas where we can put data to use to help us hit our goals.
are:
 Improving decision making
 Understanding customers and markets
 Creating better products
 Offering better services
 Improving business operations
 Monetizing data directly
Netflix is often highlighted as a great example of a business that has pioneered intelligent
usage, using data across all of these areas. Using the data it gathers as its customers use the
service, it makes decisions about what movies and shows to recommend, as well as decisions
about what content to commission or create itself. It monitors video playback quality to
customers are receiving a good level of service, and it monetizes this information through its
advertising partners.

© 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Tying these high-level use cases into a strategic goal or two is essential simply
because the wealth of opportunities offered by data make it easy to get
distracted or side-tracked into projects that aren’t of immediate importance.
This can be particularly true if you’re in an industry where levels of data literacy
are high, and there are shiny and exciting use cases appearing every day.
Considering use cases without first considering how they help you achieve your
strategic goals is a recipe for wasted time and money!

© 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Brainstorming
Once this is understood, I recommend gathering all of the key stakeholders – those
will have a part to play in your transition to becoming a data-driven business and those
who will be affected – and brainstorming ideas.
Keeping the strategic goals and high-level use cases in mind, come up with as many
as you can for where data could help you to bring them together. For each idea, try to
answer the questions:
What is the objective? For example, are you trying to understand what age range your
customers are in? To identify inefficiency in your design, manufacturing, logistics, sales
after-sales processes? To stop customers leaving for another provider when their
expires? Where to most efficiently spend your advertising budget to grow your
and customer base?

© 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
How will we measure success? Every idea should be tied to a metric or
indicator that can be monitored to give feedback on how successful it is.
There’s no point doing anything if we don’t know how to tell whether it’s
working or not!
What data will we need? Do we have everything we need to know already, or
are we going to need to implement new data monitoring and gathering
initiatives to find it? Will it be internal company data, or do we have “data
that need to be plugged with external data bought in from a provider? Will it
be structured or unstructured data?

© 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
What technology and skills do we need? Is everything we need going to be available
through cloud services, or if we have more specific needs or are dealing with very
sensitive data, are we going to have to build bespoke infrastructure? Increasingly, the
solution these days is a hybrid one. A basic understanding of the technology
requirements is useful at this point, as, of course, is some insight into whether you have
the capabilities to carry out your idea in-house or are going to have to look for
or new recruits.
What are the governance requirements? When you’re dealing with data – particularly
sensitive personal data – you have to be certain you are complying with all necessary
and regulations. This is for two reasons – firstly, to avoid the severe penalties that can
incurred by misusing or misplacing data, and secondly, to maintain the trust of your
customers. Being found in breach of the EU GDPR, for example, can potentially result in
fine of two percent of global turnover, or 10 million Euros – enough to kill most
businesses!

© 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Who will be the data customer? These are the end-users of the data you’ll be working
with – they could be your actual customers, or they could be people within your
organization who will take the insights you uncover and turn them into action. It’s
important to have a clear idea of who this will be because it impacts the way that your
data will be communicated – a critical element of any data strategy.
Who will be the use case owner? This is the person who takes overall responsibility for
implementing the idea and monitoring the outcome at a tactical level. Every data use
case should have an owner, although an owner may end up with responsibility for more
than one use case. It could be the person who conceived the use case, or someone
an affinity for data, or someone who is close to where the data will end up being used.
might be someone who ticks all of those boxes.

© 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Choosing your first use cases
Brainstorm as many prospective use cases as you can – as long as they fit a
strategy goal, a use case category, and you can answer the questions above,
then they can go on the list. But once you have as many as you can think of,
time to start thinking about which ones you want to start working on first.
During the brainstorming, you may very well have come up with ideas that,
realistically, are too difficult, too expensive, or too large-scale to work right
away. Brainstorming them is still a very useful exercise, though, as it gets
everyone thinking about the myriad of ways that data flows through an
organization and how it could be put to better use.

© 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
This is the point, though, where I recommend shortlisting around five realistic, achievable and
worthwhile use cases to move forward with first. Any more than that, and they risk becoming
unmanageable. These should fall into one of two categories – “majorly transformational” or
“quick wins”. Majorly transformational initiatives are those that are likely to have a direct and
long-lasting impact on your most important business goals, metrics, and KPIs. Quick wins are
just as valuable, though, because they are easier to implement and should show a quick return
– either in how they impact KPIs or, just as importantly at this stage, on how they impact data
literacy and buy-in within your organization. These are projects that can speedily demonstrate
the value of data and data-driven change and help develop an organization-wide appetite to
move on to bigger and more transformative projects.
Choosing the right use cases for your data strategy is just one of the topics covered in depth in
the second (and completely updated) edition of my book ‘Data Strategy – How to Profit From a
World of Big Data, Analytics and Artificial Intelligence. Click here to buy it!

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
© 2020 Bernard Marr , Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
© 2017 Bernard Marr , Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
© 2020 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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© 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved