Data Driven Business Transformation

Chapter 9Running a Business in the New Data‐Driven World: Arriving at the Destination

We are now going to introduce the concept of the dynamic data‐driven business transformation (DDDBT). This doesn't really flow off the tongue and D3BT sounds a bit like an extra from Star Wars, so we call it D3.

This chapter is a bit of a contradiction to everything that we have discussed in the previous chapters. Up to this point we have been talking about ‘data‐driven business transformation’ – positioning this as a process that has a start, middle and end. We haven't deliberately misled you but there is more to ending than just, well, ending. This chapter addresses that ‘end point’. Many organisations are currently faced with the ‘start’ of a data‐driven transformation and the reasons why they need to address this. They are identifying processes that they need to go through to be ‘ready’ to undertake a data‐driven business transformation, which we have discussed at some length in the book already. We have also discussed how the data‐driven transformation can be delivered.

Being contradictory, this chapter proposes that the true data‐driven business transformation doesn't actually have a start, middle and end. It certainly has a start and a middle BUT no end. You may reach the desired ‘end’ state, the vision that you have communicated to the rest of the organisation, but now it is time to realise that true data‐driven businesses don't stop, their transformation has no fixed end point but ...