Four ways data automation helps to accelerate digital transformation
Switchboard Sep 7
Table of Contents
One of the sessions we’re most looking forward to at Brandweek 2022 is Mapping out your Digital Transformation, which is more relevant than ever as digital-first companies strive to keep ahead of the competition.
Digital transformation is essentially the implementation of new technologies, processes, and systems across an organization to replace traditional, and often manual, ways of working. It not only enables organizations to boost operational efficiencies, but it also enables them to improve customer experiences to drive higher engagement and loyalty.
But all of this centers around one key area: the automation of data.
“Digital transformation improves processes, while automation adds speed and reduces costs,” explains Leon Godwin, principal cloud evangelist at Sungard AS. “Ultimately, digital transformation delivers more business value when it is combined with process efficiency, enabled by automation.”
The key drivers for digital transformation include increasing productivity, reducing costs, enhancing customer experience, and ensuring governance and compliance. And for some, these things are a nice-to-have. But for others, digital transformation is a means of survival.
So how can data automation help to accelerate the journey to digital transformation?
1. Data aggregation at scale
We all know data volumes are soaring. Latest forecasts show the volume of all data created, captured, copied, and consumed worldwide in 2025 will reach 181 zetabytes (that’s 10 to the power of 21). Meanwhile, some of the publishers we work with already process up to 2 billion rows of data every day. Unsurprisingly, aggregating and normalizing these volumes manually, without a solid data automation system in place to take care of the heavy lifting, quickly becomes unsustainable.
Moving from terabytes and petabytes of data today, to the exabytes and zettabytes we’re seeing on the horizon, will be impossible without automating the process.
2. Data aggregation in real time
Some of the customers we help today admit it used to take them weeks to generate reports on their data, by which time, the data they were looking at was completely stale. At best, this leads to poorly-informed decisions. At worst, those decisions can really damage the bottom line. Automation speeds up the process significantly, meaning business teams and analytics teams can pull the data as often as they need to, knowing it’s always going to be fresh enough to make informed decisions.
3. Better views of the data
Data, data, everywhere, but… it’s still too siloed to derive any meaningful insight from it. We work with companies in a number of different industries, but there is a common theme throughout. Different teams need different slices of the data, while some will also need a blended view of data from multiple disparate sources. For example, some of our publisher customers have teams who need to drill down into programmatic ad spend, teams who need to focus on direct deal ad spend, and those who need a holistic view of both. By automating, teams can get ad hoc and/or blended reports spanning the entirety of their data sets.
4. Simply better data
All the above factors are vital, but perhaps the most fundamental reason for automation is the need for better-quality data. By eliminating manual errors, the data you end up with is completely reliable and trustworthy, giving key stakeholders absolute confidence in the business decisions they make based upon it. No glitches, no gaps – just solid, meaningful data.
If you want to hear more from brand leaders on the steps to mastering your digital transformation journey, make sure you attend Mapping out your Digital Transformation at Brandweek 2022.
If you need help unifying your first or second-party data, we can help. Contact us to learn how.
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