Leaders face an endless stream of challenges: tightening margins, shifting customer expectations, operational inefficiencies, and the constant pressure to innovate. For many, these obstacles feel insurmountable; like trying to solve a crossword puzzle with only half the clues.
But here’s the surprising truth: many of these so-called “business problems” are actually data problems in disguise.
The Business Problem Trap
Take Laura, a CFO at a mid-sized retail business. She’s struggling to track profitability across her product lines. Her team spends countless hours piecing together reports, yet key decisions still rely on gut instinct rather than evidence. Laura’s frustration? A business problem.
Or Adam, a Marketing Manager for a food producer. He’s under growing pressure to justify his team’s spending. Without clear visibility into ROI, every budget review feels like a gamble. Adam’s challenge? Another business problem.
The Data-Driven Solution
In reality, Laura’s profitability headache and Adam’s ROI concerns aren’t just operational or financial challenges. They stem from fragmented, underutilised, inaccessible or missing data. By unlocking the potential of their data, they could gain the insights needed to make better decisions, faster.
This is where a strategic approach to data comes in. But before you can leverage data to solve your business challenges, you need to understand where you stand. At iSquared, we help organisations across industries tackle their biggest challenges by simplifying complexity and aligning data strategies with business priorities. The insights we are gathering is shaping our new organisation-wide Data Maturity Model; a practical framework designed to assess your current capabilities and identify where to focus for the biggest impact.
Where Are You on Your Data Journey?
The Data Maturity Model isn’t about comparing yourself to others; it’s about understanding your unique starting point and charting a path to progress. Whether your organisation currently relies on foundational tools like spreadsheets or is ready to embrace advanced analytics and AI, knowing where you are and what the next steps should be will lead to meaningful improvement.
What’s critical isn’t just understanding your organisation’s overall maturity but also uncovering how capabilities and needs vary across teams. Time and again, we’ve seen clients struggling with a challenge in one area of the business, only to discover that the solution already exists in another part of the organisation. The solutions just hasn’t been connected yet.
Unlike generic frameworks, our Data Maturity Model delves into these nuances, helping you uncover hidden opportunities and bridge internal gaps.
What’s Next?
To help you take that first step, we’re launching a new research initiative exploring the state of data maturity across industries in Ireland. By participating, you’ll gain:
- A personalised summary of your organisation’s data maturity.
- Benchmarking insights to see how you compare to others in your industry.
- Clear, actionable recommendations to guide your next steps.
