In the post pandemic world, there were lots of lessons learned. Business operations and brand strategies were tested to the extreme. Pivots were whirled and holes were filled. And as of mid-2021, companies are determined to shift from lessons learned to lessons earned.
These lessons bring with them a pressing realisation: In the realm of the 21st century businesses, data is the new gold rush.
What does a 21st century data-driven business look like?
The great tides of digitization and automation continue to open new markets despite a raging pandemic, and learning to thrive in this radicalised market takes a lion’s share of business models. While this dichotomy has fielded new competition, it has also brought to light an undeniable truth: all paths to either rising from or taking a complete detour from the Valley of Death include a common denominator: Data. The main difference between a tiny startup that booms into insane success and long term businesses that never take off is data.
Future proofed businesses are based on a solid foundation of clean, enriched, and organised data. Most small players do not have the infrastructure or the resources to create a high quality data experience. Enter DaaS service providers. These vendors have solutions that are designed to provide a DaaS-based enterprise-level core capabilities that can help businesses improve their information management and start their data journey.
So what is Data as a service, exactly? Let’s take a closer look.
The data landscape is very different from what it was a mere decade ago. Data services, be it data enrichment, wrangling, labeling or contextualisation, the market expectations have changed. Data businesses are generally misunderstood. To begin with, using the same metrics of measurement as SaaS is a blunder.
DaaS vendors help you leverage data the way you would leverage a CRM. Look at companies like cloudera, or core tools. They help clients find first-party data and use it with a sharper strategy. Swivel over to middleware companies like Plaid or Business Intelligence companies like Tableau – all that they did was enable businesses to strategize their own data well.
If we were to explain it to a seven-year-old, it would go like this. DaaS companies are like a mirror into the past. They are all about the historical facts of things. They collect said facts, and manufacture more information about them. For example, we can start a DaaS company for Iron Man. We’d start by compiling historical data about the type of material his suit is made of, how it responds to weather conditions, the legacy of his father Howard Stark, and the millions of tweets and other social media content about him from every channel from every hour of the day.
DaaS is all about the truth. To roughly quote Safegraph, ‘Data companies predict the past.’
The silos Rodeo is a drag!
When most of our clients describe how they identified or managed their data silos before we stepped in, it usually stems from traditional, outdated techniques that simply drain them out. The time and resources required to chase down something as minor as online reputation management, is a huge drain on businesses with small teams.
DaaS providers like xtract.io eliminate the data silos rodeo altogether by empowering businesses to simplify their data processes so that their teams can focus their attention on more important things – like bringing in leads.
How ML fueled the data market
As more and more people are recognising the power of data, there’s been a restructuring in the power dynamics of business intelligence.
Not very long ago, gaining insights from stockpiles of data was something that only the big players with the very best engineers could afford. It was a luxury, limited to only the cream of the Fortune 500 companies. But machine learning and artificial intelligence has changed all that. Today, finding insights from data is a cake walk, thanks to some groundbreaking ML tools.
So what do these tools mean for the DaaS market? They’ve just amped up the size of companies who are willing to buy and consume data, triggering the creation of a hyper-competitive business ecosystem.
A complete reimagining of business
A Forrester report said “80% of businesses lack the infrastructural capabilities and an enterprise data strategy to capitalise on their data assets”
Everyone wants to be future ready, every business owner wants to be in the practice of omnichannel, digitisation and robotic process automation. But it’s incredibly hard for these businesses to get started on their data journey because they do not have the full suite of solutions yet. And it gets harder, because even the data that they do have, is either locked up in silos or of poor quality.
The marketplace is becoming increasingly crowded, and one of the few things that make you stand out from the crowd is compelling, consumable data that leverages your business intelligence. Business intelligence also means being able to identify bad information and practice ways to fix it.
At Xtract, we know that our job is like sometimes, we’re gatekeepers to a library of knowledge. And sometimes, it’s like we’re archivists. We don’t write books of knowledge. We preserve them.
Our job is to help businesses shine, and be the pit crew when they race into the hyper-competitive market place. So if you want to give your business the right data it needs to unleash its full potential in the Information Age, give them xtract.io. We’ve got exactly the suite of data services you need to expand your customer base and improvise your business processes across a wide range of channels.
Plus, because xtract.io is curated by the most meticulous data experts, teams of any shape and size can scale into the service, and we assist you with our technical support throughout so that you don’t have to journey alone.
Businesses big and small are battling the data nightmare.
If you’re looking for advanced data services, request a demo today and learn how our team can help you.
