The Crucial Importance of Innovation in Unpredictable Times

Three-quarters of leaders see innovation as vital to survival.

FREMONT, CA: Innovation will be more important than ever for businesses to survive these difficult times and emerge stronger. According to InterSystems research, nearly three-quarters (74 per cent) of business leaders in the UK and Ireland see innovation as essential to their continued existence, motivated by the need to keep their organisation agile and future-proof.

Many firms may believe innovation is out of reach due to recurring issues like skill gaps and labour shortages, but this doesn't have to be the case. Organisations may be empowered to overcome these problems and make the data-driven decisions necessary for innovation by arming themselves with accurate, real-time data. Data is frequently segregated and difficult for everyone to access. Therefore democratising data will be essential to assisting organisations in realising their innovation potential.

Therefore, organisations should keep moving forward with innovation efforts rather than slowing them down to avoid falling behind the competition.

The Role of Data Democratisation

Gaining access to data and insights frequently necessitates assistance from the IT staff or data scientists. Therefore, such requests for insights go unanswered for a while and judgments are made using faulty, out-of-date data due to competing priorities and labour scarcity.

By giving all business users access to data and allowing them to make the data-driven decisions necessary to innovate and keep the firm moving forward, data democratisation aids in resolving these problems. Organisations are using a smart data fabric architecture more frequently to accomplish this.

The smart data fabric, a next-generation data architecture, enables on-demand access to and harmonisation of data from existing systems and silos inside and outside the organisation, guaranteeing that the data is accurate and up-to-date. Through this, users can get entire, real-time end-to-end visibility of the company and its clients.

Business users may explore the data, ask ad hoc questions, and drill down via additional queries based on initial results to dynamic self-service data exploration capabilities built into the fabric. They can do this in an interactive, iterative way that reduces reliance on IT and puts the data in the hands of those who need it.

Direct access to real-time data frees up IT staff and data scientists while enabling business users to make data-driven decisions on the fly to spur innovation. IT teams can now devote more time to the value-adding aspects of their roles, such as continuing to advance the organization's digital transformation strategies and assisting in increasing innovation as a result, since they are no longer required to spend a significant amount of time sourcing data and insights for a variety of other business units.

Additionally, embedded analytics capabilities like artificial intelligence and machine learning enable businesses to boost automation of the more tedious but required internal jobs, reducing the skills gaps many organisations are currently experiencing. With budgets likely to be tightened due to the challenging economic climate, this use of technology will help resources go further without putting further stress on people.

While many organisations are probably unsure of what to expect in 2023, slowing innovation activities at such a crucial moment could worsen their problems. The more successful strategy will be to use data to identify and seize the biggest opportunities.

For instance, staff can introduce more revenue-generating services by having a 360-degree perspective of customer and company data, which helps them better understand the problems consumers are experiencing and how to fix them. Similarly, by utilising data, organisations may more clearly identify areas where cost and efficiency savings can be made and launch the innovation projects required to bring about those improvements.

Ultimately, equipping employees with data and automation will make it easier for businesses to implement the innovative projects required to get them through these trying times and realise the real business benefits that will enable them to survive and thrive in today's unpredictably changing environment.