‘It’s all about data, if I haven’t got the information I need then how can I make informed decisions?’ , I was asked the other day. I absolutely agree. My sentiments exactly!
The more people I speak with, the more I realise that good data has become one of the top tools helping all sorts of businesses and organisations to perform better and to succeed in their space of expertise.
I have been working in the infrastructure arena for many years, mainly assisting local councils with asset management related tasks; data collections, managing asset systems and databases, maintaining infrastructure data, etc. But, I have learned over the last 6 months that the same principles I use to manage infrastructure data can be, and is applied to almost any discipline, and any organisation where data is used to drive evidence-based decisions.
For example, I was speaking with a teacher the other day who explained to me about the vigorous data collections her school must carry out each day, and the type of analysis that is undertaken. It really opened my eyes and I was blown away at the amount of work that goes into collecting and analysing the data. Boy, if we put that much energy into collecting that much data about our assets, we would be able to plan each asset’s lifecycle down to the last minute!
I’m a little bit ashamed by my lack of insight of what a teacher’s job entails, but I guess I should have realised – it IS all about the data, no matter what line of business. If we don’t have the relevant data, then we simply can’t make well informed, evidence-based decisions. If we don't have the data we are placing ourselves at a huge disadvantage.
Look out for next week’s blog: I’ll be sharing some tips to help when planning your next data collection plan.
See you then.
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