Smarter business decisions are critical in these uncertain times. Companies of all sizes and industries are being challenged to shift their focus to digital and transform traditional processes. This is where the value of data comes into play.

Data is now more powerful than ever. Organisations driven by it are more resilient and stay ahead of their competition, thanks to the insights it provides. Recent research found that 82% of data-driven companies reported they had a critical advantage during the pandemic. And 79% of data-driven companies ensure their decision making is supported by the insights data provides.

Data is key to solving some of the biggest challenges faced by businesses today. For example, HR teams are concerned about retaining talent when remote working is increasing in popularity. With disruptive change and uncertainty, sales organisations must improve forecasting. And IT departments want apps that are more relevant, personal, and responsive. To address all of these priorities, companies need complete and accurate data.

There are many tools that help businesses assess data and High Tech analytics. We’ll take a look at one in particular later in this article. And with data leading the charge for the High Tech industry, there is a growing requirement for companies to establish a data-driven culture — empowering their employees to access and analyse the information needed to make smarter decisions.

In this guide, we will explore data culture and literacy and how the High Tech industry can leverage data to make smarter decisions.

What is data culture, and why is it essential for High Tech?

Businesses can use data to understand how to serve their customers best and improve their experience. When used correctly, data aligns every business area and returns the focus to where it should be – the consumer. To make this possible, you must enable your employees to access and analyse your data to make better-informed decisions – faster. When done correctly, this is known as creating a data culture.

Building a community of data experts starts with education, communications, and support programmes that encourage and recognise the value of using data.

Invest in training

Consider investing in your existing staff by upskilling them with a broad set of capabilities to help them analyse data effectively. Like Salesforce, many companies utilise Tableau to help make this possible – more on this later.

Data is a rich language. Therefore, you should also train your people to recognise how to put data forward in a persuasive manner that supports their narrative or argument. This is key to driving a successful data culture.

Why education around the value of data is important

Employees at all levels of your business must also adapt to High Tech analytics and develop a data-driven mindset so your organisation can get the most value from it. Education is key to making this possible.

Our guide to building a data culture gives you and your teams the tools you need to transform into a data-driven organisation. The guide also includes best practices and guidelines to help create core capabilities and repeatable processes.

Data literacy is critical for every role in a High Tech company

Data literacy is increasingly essential for High Tech companies, and therefore, the ability to work with data is a highly in-demand skill. By aligning data, tools and decision-making, companies gain a competitive advantage.

To ensure data literacy is progressing across your company, it’s important to consider: Can your employees read your data? Do they understand it? Are they empowered to ask the right questions about it?

To get value from your data, your employees must understand how data is defined and how to ask the right questions. For example, can your employees interpret correlations? Are they able to build a narrative using accurate data? Data analytics removes the guesswork and enables your employees to frame their narrative using relevant facts and numbers.

How Tableau can support smarter data-driven decisions

Read on to find out what impact utilising the data from a platform like Tableau could have for two different roles in your business.

Sales manager 

At a recent Salesforce Live session, Adam Cook, Senior Manager in Solution Engineering at Tableau, provided a demo of the platform and how it can help drive sales managers to make more intelligent decisions.

At a glance, the dashboard can provide accurate data about the pipeline and quality of the opportunities. It helps teams to prioritise their efforts and enables the sales manager to forecast accurately. 

In the demo, Adam demonstrated how they could leverage analytics to gain insights. For example, to stay on top of key performance indicators by scanning essential metrics in the dashboard.

Tableau offers an easy-to-navigate dashboard and can enable sales managers to have rich data-driven discussions with their teams.

The power of the dashboard continues behind the scenes, too. It can pull data from multiple sources, such as Salesforce and Excel to provide a consolidated view of relevant data from across your organisation. The platform is also enhanced by Einstein Discovery – Tableau’s AI capability that delivers predictions and recommendations for more intelligent decision-making.

Utilising Tableau is just one example of how sales leaders in High Tech companies can leverage data to work smarter than ever before.

COO – mergers & acquisitions

When it comes to acquisitions, a COO needs an intuitive platform that offers live insights. Later in the Salesforce Live session, Adam Cook shared a demo offering valuable insights into how a COO could potentially use the platform to help mergers and acquisitions.

For companies like Salesforce, data is central to delivering success with every acquisition. But the information needs to be real-time and accurate. Adam demonstrated how Tableau offers a live birds-eye-view at every point of the journey. 

For example, a COO may identify that employee retention has been impacted since an acquisition. Tableau offers a deeper understanding of that information – perhaps there’s a correlation between employees leaving and general employee retention, for instance? This might involve analysing data across locations and assessing employee numbers to help prioritise efforts.

Salesforce’s role as a High Tech business

At Salesforce, we believe in the power of data. As a High Tech organisation, embedding it into all that we do is critical. Using High Tech data and analytics helps drive and improve customer value, and ultimately, increase revenue year on year.

Our strategy is simple. We collect and analyse data about how our products and services are used to improve them and the overall customer experience. We utilise our platform Tableau across the business for data and High Tech analytics and empower a data-driven culture through communications and support programmes.

Watch this Salesforce Live on-demand session to get more data insights: Smarter Decisions for High-Tech? The Answer's in Your Data.