Not for nothing has data been described as ‘the new oil’. Today’s businesses are awash with the stuff. It’s the byproduct of years of digitisation of core systems and processes, from customer relationship management to billing and revenue collection.

But it’s what businesses do with their data that counts, not how much of it they have stored in platforms and databases throughout their enterprises.

At present, a sizeable number of Australian businesses are not doing nearly as much as they might with theirs. In many instances, they’re neglecting opportunities to optimise their decision making processes because they’re not able to make data-driven insights available to leaders when they’re most needed.

Doing more with a data driven culture

That’s a shame because research shows a genuinely data-driven culture can confer a powerful competitive advantage on organisations of all stripes and sizes.

Data driven organisations have a 23-times greater likelihood of acquiring new clients and a 19-times higher chance of being profitable endeavours than competitors which continue to rely on ‘gut feel’ as the basis for strategic decision making, according to research cited by McKinsey.

They’re also better able to identify opportunities to optimise their operations, to develop a deeper and more fulsome understanding of their customers, and to come up with creative strategies to improve their offering and customer experience.

If reducing costs and increasing sales and profits are among your organisation’s aspirations, fostering a healthy, high functioning data culture should be an urgent imperative in the new year.

Here are some tips to help you develop one.

Build data literacy

Building a data culture starts with the development of data literate employees. That requires actively encouraging your team to build and hone their ability to synthesise, analyse and interpret information from a variety of sources. Workshops, online courses and mentoring sessions are all great ways of getting everyone up to speed.

Ensure data accessibility

Information is easier to analyse and exploit when it’s readily accessible. Storing it in siloed data structures and systems, as many organisations currently do, makes it anything but. That’s why it pays to invest in programs and platforms that enable you to pull together data from multiple systems and sources to create a single source of truth.

Deploying an operations enablement and workforce platform, for example, will allow you to carry out in-depth data analysis, monitor your employee engagement metrics in real time and extract insights to help you foster a culture of commitment and achievement in your enterprise.

Promote collaboration

Many hands make light work as the old saying has it. When it comes to transforming data driven insights into business decisions and actions, many heads can result in better outcomes. Little surprise, then, that cross functional collaboration is one of the hallmarks of organisations that are doing great things with data. Encourage it at yours and you’ll soon enough find yourself appreciating the positive outcomes it engenders.

Celebrate data wins

Success can be contagious, which is why there’s nothing like seeing colleagues elsewhere in the organisation hitting the heights to encourage other teams to redouble their efforts. Celebrating data-related wins, and the individuals who’ve achieved them, is a great way to highlight the value of taking a data-driven approach to business problems and challenges.

Seek support from the top

Few initiatives can succeed without leadership backing. Getting board level buy-in and having senior executives convey their support publicly will help drive change and ensure the data driven practices and processes you’re seeking to introduce become embedded across the organisation.

Getting smarter in 2025

All signs suggest the upcoming year will be a tricky one for Australian businesses as lacklustre economic conditions and contracting consumer demand make profitable growth harder to achieve.

Drawing on the power of data to make smarter decisions at speed can help your organisation stay afloat, and ahead of the competition, during this challenging period.

If that’s a priority in 2025, it’s a great time to start putting the building blocks in place to help you achieve this goal.

Brendan Maree is vice president & country manager for Australia and New Zealand at ProHance.