It takes more than just understanding your customers’ pain points to remain relevant in today’s competitive and dynamic environment. You now also need to deliver experiences that make the most sense for them throughout the customer journey.

Data helps but it’s the insights that you extract from it that can truly reinvent the way you delight customers through any touchpoint. To do that, you must start from the core of your business—your organization.

From marketing and engineering to search and social media, your teams need to know how to leverage these insights so they can realize their purpose. That is, ultimately, to affect the bottom line. But it’s easier said than done. So, in this post, you’ll discover the three essential steps that can help you transform your business into an insights-driven organization.

1. Create a data culture from top to bottom

In 2018, a Forrester report found a new kind of company. The market research organization calls them insights-driven businesses. And by 2021, they are set to earn $1.8 trillion, growing at an average of more than 30% annually.

With that said, you need to get stakeholders’ buy-in before you reap the benefits of being an insights-driven organization. Having a strong data culture should start from the leadership. In other words, it’s leading through example.

So before taking on this semi-herculean task, executives need to start emphasizing the significance of details and facts when making decisions. When employees see that such a level of data is required to communicate with and convince managers, becoming an insights-driven culture will be an easier transition.

However, being data-driven might not come naturally for all employees. This is where support through training comes in. Your insights shouldn’t just be for customers, they should also be used to increase the competencies of your staff.

2. Establish a process that streamlines data use

One of the biggest problems of all types of organizations is data silos. Without addressing it, your effort to build an insights-driven company will be a waste.

In fact, Gartner found that 87% of organizations have low business intelligence and analytics maturity. Some of the reasons include primitive IT structure, limited collaboration between IT and business users, data rarely linked to a clearly improved business outcome, and more.

When individual teams struggle to obtain data, they can’t do comprehensive analytics. As a result, they won’t get the big picture—from product development to advertising campaigns. This then makes it impossible not only to transition into a data-first culture but also to deliver seamless experience throughout the customer journey.

To be insights-driven, you have to address the data silos that exist in your organization. Once you get that done, the next step is to align responsibilities and agree on company-wide processes and metrics. This will streamline data analysis, smoothen communication across teams, and facilitate better collaboration within the organization.

3. Build long-term data aspirations

According to McKinsey & Co., businesses who “use customer analytics are 23 times more likely to clearly outperform their competitors in terms of new- customer acquisition than non-intensive users, and nine times more likely to surpass them in customer loyalty.” They also have a 19 times higher chance of achieving above-average profitability.

While these potential benefits look rosy, transforming into an insights-driven organization doesn’t happen overnight. Hence, it’s important to set the right strategy for the long haul.

Start by normalizing data science and business together. You can do this by creating a community of enthusiasts who are willing to help employees realize and leverage the power of insights. Some companies even set up a C-level executive to manage data because that’s how important it is.

Regardless of the size of your organization, what can set you up for long-term success is having the right mindset and using the right tools.

In a world that puts a premium on customer experience, the goal is to use insights for improving customer journeys. So, it’s vital to institute a customer-centric mindset and to pair it with solutions that will help you succeed.

Introducing Dealtale. Unified Marketing Analytics and Optimization.

Dealtale is an out-of-the-box SaaS platform that unifies all your data and delivers real-time visibility into every stage of the customer journey. No matter your data sources right now, Dealtale integrates all of it in a friendly UI where you can analyze and get insights—fast and at scale. The benefits? You can:

• Discover hidden revenue opportunities
• Scale your campaigns profitably
• Remove friction from your customer journey

Check out Dealtale today and jumpstart your journey into becoming an insights-driven organization. Sign up here.