Lost Warriors of the Data Warfare

By Muhammad Humair Khan: There is a battle of data collection in every industry, not only tech giants are accumulating information but other sectors like governments, insurances, logistics, retailers and financial institutions etc are also gearing up in this domain. Organizations artistically demonstrate their product features and loyalty programs around their app or website so that they can engage their customers digitally as well, which certainly allow them to collect data.

An article appeared in “The Medium”, an online publishing platform, stated that Clive Humby, a British Mathematician, was the first to coin the phrase “Data is the new oil”. He elaborated the concept by saying that as Oil when refined becomes valuable entity similarly, the true value of data gets unlocked after its processing. However, data also has many other properties which requires the analogy to break down on more detailed inspection. Data processing is simply the conversion of raw data in meaningful information through a process, as defined in “The Medium”. Oil refining requires significant amounts of resources. On the other hand, data can be replicated at low cost and can be re-used, re-engineered and subject to time sensitivity. But one of the key components is utilizing the data; Due to lack of awareness, most of the organizations have completely confused the concept of data utilization with data reporting.
Since organizations have already witnessed that data-driven decisions led them to the top and data doesn’t lie perhaps that’s the reason that they have started rushing for data collection. But unfortunately, most of them are under the impression that data can only assist them to measure the historical performances and trends or so. This is where potential opportunities go missing. Your business data is your assets and your competitors don’t have access or visibility on this; you can use it to improve and narrow down your future decisions and predict the consequences of your calculated actions.
Example of highest data/tech academic control ever analysed and utilized by China may help to understand the effective utilization of data.

Following the current circumstances of coronavirus crisis, China has managed to control the situation very quickly since they have considered several precautions but they have also taken advantage from the data prospective. While having a bit of insights into life in China, the Chinese government has done two things in particular to control the crisis. The Chinese government collects massive amount of data which includes but not limited to images from CCTV camera which means if you are in camera, they recognize you, they know who you are and where you are. Another big source of data is WeChat, (a Chinese social media and debit card all rolled in one super app) which also tracks where you are, what you are up for and what you’re saying to your friends. China used this big data in novel way to tackle the coronavirus. If individual’s (say Mr. A) COVID-19 test is positive then authorities would run algorithm(s) that enables them to identify all the different places Mr. A has been visiting during previous 14 days and all the people who might have contacted with Mr. A during that time. Then the authorities would notify contacted people to quarantine themselves. So this could help to understand that China not only collected but also utilized that data in the right way.
Conclusively, institutes should aim to focus on analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning etc as well, as collecting data only wouldn’t help. They need to understand that organizing themselves around individual is important instead of products or channels, develop the ability to view an individual as one segment, recognizing their uniqueness, and tailoring their offerings so that individual view as meeting their needs not pushing products. Develop customer-centric business model, analyze and act upon the insights from the ever-increasing mass of data. Technology will continuously change everything – we need to adopt the right approach.