Staying Away From the Dark Side: How Dark Data Can Hurt your Business

Amongst the key elements for businesses success, data analytics is a critically important aspect to determine whether a company sees a positive or negative return on investment (ROI). Additionally, elements like marketing strategies, organic traffic and customer satisfaction can be evaluated through analysis.

As essential as it is, business experts have determined that when it comes to the amount of information that an average company keeps in their database, approximately 90 percent is either obsolete or not reaching its full potential, therefore, becoming dark data.

In simple terms, dark data can be seen as keeping unnecessary information under a “just in case” mentality. This hurts the company not only from a financial standpoint, but it also prevents executives to get a full 360-degree view of their business. A list of possible sources for dark data can be associated with customer and accounting information, previous employee data, financial statements, email correspondences and even notes or presentations.

So, how is dark data hurting your business?

Missing Valuable Opportunities

Predictable Behavior

When your company fails to analyze information, letting it become dark, they are also failing to exploit valuable information that could provide insights which can drive business. Some great predictions like website visitor behavior, customer’s perceptions and organic traffic patterns that could be vital for the company, are being ignored.

The Competitive Edge

The information that your company is taking for granted, is information that competitors are likely to take advantage of. When you compare an organization that has let their data become dark, versus an organization that succeeds at analyzing the information they receive, the latter will more likely have a better understanding of the industry and will develop better strategies to reach their target audience.

Slowed Evolution

When your company invests time and effort into data analysis, you can see trends faster and increase the speed of your evolution. Additionally, it is easier to foresee issues and potential opportunities that could determine the course of decisions in the long and short term.

Automated Flow Management

By automating flow of management and financial data, corporate performance experts, like Adaptive Insights, can help you make faster decisions before data becomes outdated. Additionally, through services like these you are able to get a deeper understanding of the information that your company is retrieving from various sources.

Whether you have been saving former clients’ information for years, or ignoring new incoming information, keep in mind that dark data is one of the things that could be holding you back.