At Data Culture, we help businesses take upward steps in their data maturity level regardless of their current level. In this article, we will talk about data activation as a means to move data closer to business users and truly build a data-driven team.
Most organizations today generate terabytes of data, and with the number of data literacy campaigns on using data, some of these organizations have been able to move from having isolated data to getting insights from data using dashboards and different forms of reporting. This is definitely a path in the right direction, and shout out to all data teams generating reports and dashboards that enable the business to make strategic decisions.
In addition, businesses typically operate on modern data infrastructure, and while the specific technologies vary significantly across organizations, four fundamental components remain consistent across virtually every data stack.
As of 2023, organizations worldwide used an average of 112 Software as a Service (SaaS) applications (source), and businesses using a modern data infrastructure would use the components above to eliminate data silos to drive analytics and central reporting.
However, in recent years, businesses have begun to notice that data stored within the warehouse are only accessible to technical users and through dashboards mostly used by key stakeholders for strategic decisions. Imagine how empowering it would be for business users to access data insights on the tool or software they primarily use for their daily work. How productive would it be for a salesperson to prioritize leads in the CRM with high lead scores that have been computed based on customer interactions in the data warehouse? Activations like this have increased clients’ conversion rates by over 10%, and this is where data activation comes in.
Data Activation transforms the insights locked within your data warehouse into actionable intelligence, delivering it directly to business users through the tools they use daily. This process elevates data professionals to strategic roles at the heart of the organization, directly connecting their contributions to measurable business outcomes.
Data Activation empowers businesses to use data to intervene proactively at the right time. The applications for Data Activation span numerous domains, from enhancing marketing automation to streamlining business processes across various departments. Ultimately, the goal is leveraging data to create meaningful customer interactions and strengthen engagement.
Data activation in marketing enables businesses to personalize customer experiences, optimize ad targeting, and improve engagement. By leveraging customer behavior data, businesses can create personalized email campaigns, and ultimately increase conversion and customer retention rates. For example, you can automate offering discounts to high LTV customers who abandon carts during shopping.
In sales, data activation helps teams prioritize leads, refine outreach strategies, and improve forecasting. By analyzing historical purchase behavior, customer interactions, and CRM data, sales teams can identify high-value prospects, tailor pitches based on customer needs, and improve overall sales efficiency.
Data activation enhances customer support by providing agents with real-time insights into customer history, preferences, and previous interactions. By integrating data from the data warehouse into customer support tools, businesses can offer proactive support, reduce response times, and issue resolution.
Data activation puts data back into the hands of the actual business users who can leverage it to drive meaningful results and richer customer experiences. Data activation has huge potential to make an organization truly data-driven and move from dashboards to operationalizing data insights.
