Decisions that are informed and led by solid data have the best chance of resulting in success. That has been even more true during the COVID-19 pandemic. This interesting information came to us from Financial Management in their article, “How finance can promote data-led decision-making.”

Being data-driven means building tools, abilities and a culture that acts on data. A 2020 Accenture study suggests that about half of finance functions have received more requests for financial data, price and trade-related data, sentiment analysis and risk and compliance data. This demand for data is even higher for finance functions in high-growth organizations.

Metrics matter. Data and data analysis hold the promise to increase revenue, decrease costs, mitigate risk and improve a business’ chance to compete more effectively. Data is a key ingredient in this success. Of course, it can’t just be any data; it has to be the right data. The data set has to be relevant to the question at hand. It also has to be timely, accurate, clean, unbiased and it has to be trustworthy.

Melody K. Smith

Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.