Most organisations today are not suffering from lack of data but rather insights from the data - and how to turn insights into real business advantage, said an industry expert.

Organisations today have gathered massive amounts of data, added Nael Nasr, KPMG Bahrain management consulting partner leading the company’s new data and analytics practice in the kingdom, speaking in an exclusive interview with the Gulf Daily News (GDN), our sister publication, in an exclusive interview.

Few organisations fully understand the huge potential from unlocking data, he said.

"There's a deluge of data about internal departments, employees, products and services and customers flowing in from multiple sources - internal systems, third party systems, Internet, social media, blogs, mobility, etc.


"In addition the world is changing at an increasingly rapid pace and companies need world class insight and capacity to change at a short notice," he added.

"With every data gap, organisations will miss the opportunity to take right decisions. In the past, decision-making was largely driven by intuition and experience - whoever had the best gut feel would win."

This, Nasr said, is especially true of markets like Bahrain. "Today the winners are defined as who has the more insightful grasp of their data."

The expert said he believed that analytics, through process and system enhancements, was an offering to empower the right people, to receive the right information, at the right time to allow them to make the right strategic decisions - whether it was for managing exposure to risks in marketing, finance or supply chain or making sure it was selling the right products and services to the right customers.

According to him, the majority of Bahraini organisations have gone past the preliminary stage of enterprise resource planning stabilisation and data collection, and already have a huge number of standard reports.

While the firm only launched the analytics offering last month, it has already commenced two implementations with high profile companies here.

"We have also had discussions with several Bahrain-based companies and the interest has been phenomenal - especially around the 'Leadership dashboard' capabilities which give the leadership and management team an executive, real time view of the organisation's performance," he said.

For companies interested in exploring analytics, Mr Nasr recommends a quick diagnostic review, which takes less than a week.

"We can come in and do a high level assessment of the company's metrics and data environment and recommend ways it can be enhanced, typically through a mix of process and technology transformation," he said. – TradeArabia News Service