Transform your business and innovate with C&F’s explicitly built product portfolio to help you make data-driven decisions

Due to unprecedented growth in modern technology, data-driven decision making has become an integral part of most businesses. Data-driven decisions are backed by hard data, and it is now applied in various fields like healthcare, transportation, and manufacturing industry. This type of data-driven decision making is also known as data-based decision management. 2020 is a year of disruption and lockdown. Organizations had not considered the possibility of a pandemic outbreak and thus had not been prepared for its consequences. Something like COVID-19 seemed too abstract to happen. This is why the current pandemic should become an impulse to prepare for future times of unpredictability, to make plans for business continuity and even faster acceleration of digital transformation.

This is an opportunity if companies consciously work with data and build a solid foundation for decision making. But it could also be a threat if the systems like CRM, CLM, ERP, pricing, risk management are fed low-quality data, and data management is based on solutions that are poorly adjusted to the business model.

Crisis go, crisis come

The COVID-19 pandemic could be treated as a benchmark. By learning to take into consideration such challenges as the climate crisis or possible future lockdowns (the second wave of infections is spoken about loudly and nobody knows what it will look like), companies should change their approach to keep up with the new normal after any such revolution!

We have been keen observers of the IT market for the past 20 years, and it is obvious that companies, and the economy at large, are now at a turning point. Never before has the observation that digitization is the key to remaining competitive been more true than it is now. And the key to success is good quality data!

The digital explosion

According to the results of the survey carried out by C&F this summer, more than half of the responding companies implemented new digital tools to answer the pandemic-related challenges; these included risk management systems, digital signatures, tools for work automation or contactless work, including customer service ones.

This huge, unprecedented dynamics can be seen at every step of the way – due to demand increasing in leaps and bounds; IT solution providers are experiencing a golden age. Just the exponential growth in popularity of communicators like Zoom, Slack, Skype, or MS Teams is evidence enough that, if before the COVID-19 crisis, we were experiencing a digital revolution, then today we are facing an explosion. This includes an explosion of data.

An ocean of data

With the ongoing digital transformation of the global economy, which – according to recent predictions – may increase by as much as 20% CAGR, amounts of data are skyrocketing. The latest IDC's Global DataSphere Forecast predicts that more than 59 zettabytes of data (59 trillions of gigabytes) will be created, captured, copied, and consumed in the world this year. And according to IDC, big data size in 2010 was standing at a mere 1.2 zettabytes. There is even more: the amount of data created over the next three years will be more than the data created over the past 30 years! All this is happening while at the same time, it is no secret (Gartner) that 99.5% of all data is never analyzed or used anywhere. It is rarely a walk in the park to transform an entire organization onto one that is "data-driven", but this investment pays off, as shown by McKinsey Global Institute: organizations that operate on the basis of data are 23 times more likely to get new clients, six times as likely to retain existing ones and 19 times more likely to increase profitability. The window of opportunity is open now. Don't miss this chance and work with the best suppliers of data management solutions to secure yourself a good place in the new reality.

Data: the most precious commodity

Building a company's competitiveness in the context of such a great abundance of data is a strategic-level challenge and should be approached as such.

This is because data is a resource whose use must be included in the organization's development strategy and must be the fundament for processes contained therein. This is already happening, and we see it while working with our clients. Current research by McKinsey shows that 30 percent of companies include data analysis strategies in their broader corporate strategy.

 In EY's Capital Confidence Barometer, 34% of respondents see underestimating the challenges of IT integration as the most significant obstacle in deals meeting expectations. Our experience with and knowledge of this subject come predominantly from the pharmaceutical and animal health industries, but it is a safe assumption that it is applicable in any industry. The pharma sector is a world of many international markets, thousands of products, diverse pricing policies, and customer segments; all of these are almost always strictly regulated, which makes things very challenging. Integrating data and treating it as an asset, i.e., include its use in the development strategy and processes in organizations, can be done successfully only by well-experienced and agile teams like C&F.

Data management solutions: tailored to your needs

How do you make use of the potential hiding in data? How do you build a data-driven enterprise and reap real benefits from this transformation? The beginning of the answer lies in working with the best experts in the field. And this means not just technological expertise – here what counts is first and foremost experience and, resulting from it, readiness and capability of understanding companies' business models and needs. Only having achieved that can you start devising ways to harness technology to help achieve your business goals.

C&F supports organizations in their implementation of digital innovations, suggesting modern architectures, tools, and technologies. Among these digital accelerators are solutions like data lakes, cloud computing, and cherry-picked open source technologies, the OutSystems platform to speed up customer communications through digital channels, or Data Science Studio (DSS) from the French start-up Dataiku, to name a few.

Of paramount importance for us at C&F is that sensitive data must be collected and processed in compliance with rigorous security protocols and legal requirements, hence the merging of data management and GRC.

Choosing the right technology is but one step on the long road to becoming a data-driven organization. Our company has accompanied a number of "Fortune 500" corporations in their digital transformation. This has been a treasure trove of experience, which led to our consultants becoming world-class experts, highly valuable to our clients. For us, this work is consulting first, technology second. We understand
the business, and thanks to this – we know how to help it rest its operation on foundations based on the potential of data.

Introducing the Agile philosophy to both project management and budgeting completes the picture of a true digital transformation. C&F operates at all stages of all these aspects, providing IT and business services to allow its clients to monetize data effectively by using advanced technological solutions.

We consider the effective use of data the most cutting-edge and future-proof area of business. The past few years have already shown, and 2020 confirmed – sometimes painfully - too many organizations how little they tap into the potential they themselves tirelessly create – their own data.