83% of data-driven companies in India gained critical business advantage during Covid-19: Report

A majority of data-driven businesses in India gained critical advantages during the Covid-19 pandemic according to a new study by Tableau Software and YouGov.

The study was conducted to better understand how organisations in the Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) region have used data during Covid-19.

According to the report, 83 per cent of data-driven companies in India reported gaining critical business advantages during the pandemic.

The report also highlighted various benefits that businesses can gain through data including more effective communication with stakeholders (62 per cent), making strategic business decisions faster (58 per cent), increasing cross-team collaboration (56 per cent) and making their business more agile (48 per cent). “Being data-driven is also fuelling optimism in uncertain times as more data-driven companies,” the report said.

Nearly, 76 per cent of data-driven Indian companies are optimistic about the future health of their business in the next six months as compared to 37 per cent of non-data-driven companies.

“In contrast, non-data-driven companies are slower to grasp the importance of data as they navigate through the pandemic, with only 45 per cent of them seeing it as a critical advantage,” as per the report.

“Data is emerging as a differentiator in the uncertain environment of 2020. While businesses in India continue to weather the pandemic, the survey points to a ‘data divide’ where organisations differ in their ability to leverage data as a strategic asset. This divide will only continue growing if businesses in India don’t act now to empower people with data and make their existing asset actionable. Going into 2021, businesses need to view data culture as a must-have as they navigate through the pandemic and seek out growth,” said Anand Ekambaram, Country Manager, Tableau India.

As they leverage the benefits of data, such companies will keep focusing on investment in data skills with 86 per cent of data-driven organisations in India being eager to increase or continue their existing level of investment over the next six months. This is the highest in the region. However, 26 per cent of non-data driven organisations opted to either reduce or not invest in data skills at all.

India had the highest percentage of companies that plan to increase their spending on data skills training (43 per cent), above the APJ region average of 31 per cent.

Overall, for all businesses surveyed as part of the report, the top lessons learnt during this pandemic include the need for data transparency (53 per cent), better data quality (52 per cent) and investment in data skills (47 per cent).

Lakshmi Narayana, Tableau User Group Ambassador said, “In my career in data, I've found that understanding data and integrating it into everything we do as a business is imperative as we now enter the data era. If every individual is given the empowerment and training to develop their data skills it will allow your organisation to make decisions faster and stand out in a competitive landscape.”

“What gets measured gets done and if I may add, what gets measured and reported gets improved. Our data and visualisation driven strategy enabled us to create a single version of the truth in critical areas like cash flow, inventory, delivery lead times besides operations, that drove our ability to stay close to customers, run our operations and simultaneously drive improvement across multiple fronts,” said Sarajit Jha, Chief Business Transformation and Digital Solutions Office, Tata Steel.

The study was conducted among more than 2,500 medium level managers or higher and IT decision-makers across four markets in the Asia Pacific (Singapore, Australia, India and Japan).

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