• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, September 1, 2022

Decision making based on data is a flawed process in many firms, judging by How Data Maturity and Product Analytics Improve Digital Experiences and Business Outcomes, a study by IDC, sponsored by Heap. 

For one thing, few teams are using all the tools they have at their disposal. They say:

• Data is only used to measure success or failure of major initiatives — 69.6%
• Decisions are often driven by the HIPPO (highest-paid person) without regard for data — 69% 
• Too often, teams are not using the data or analyses made available to them — 65.5%

Then there is the growing need for efficiency — perhaps driven by inflation, recession fears, and global supply chain concerns. Customer satisfaction/CX  fell to second place when respondents were asked to list their top three business priorities in this year’s survey.

1. Operational efficiency
2. Customer satisfaction
3. Sustainability
4. Profits
5. Employee productivity
6. Revenue
7. Innovation
8. Cost savings
9. Business agility
10. Business resilience
11. Less business risk
12. Less time to market

The study divided companies into two levels of maturity: laggards and leaders. 

Of the leaders, 80.1% o fully automate their data validation, data access policies, and data set management processes, while only 3.2% of lagging do so. In fact, 72.1% of the latter use manual processes or basic automation for data validation, data access, and data set management. 

Leaders using automation improved their revenue outcomes by 40.3%, versus 12.7% for lagging companies. And 45.8% saw a 45.8% improvement in time to market for new products and services, compared to 17% of the laggards. 

The results were similar for customer satisfaction/loyalty, profit, improved operational efficiency and employee productivity. Leaders were 2.4x more likely to achieve increased efficiency.  

In addition, 50% of leaders can answer questions about the performance of digital products or experiences within minutes, and 34% can do so within hours and 13% in the same day. In contrast, only 34% of lagging companies could answer within a day, 47% within two to three days and 13% within a week. Only 3% were speedy.

Leaders are also better at grasping the pain points in the user journey: 85% have excellent understanding, and 13% a good one. Of the laggards, 29% have only a little understanding, 35% some, 27% good and 2% excellent. 

Moreover, 52% of leaders have session replay capability, compared to only 34% of lagging organizations. And 68% of leaders have automatic identification of unexpected user behavior, while only 37% of laggards do. 

Behavioral data is used by 82% of leaders, a 14.6% higher rate than that of lagging companies. 

In general, leading teams are more likely more capable of assessing data: 50% validate it themselves, compared to 24% of laggards. 

How to lagging companies do it? Of those polled, 44% have access to data specialists to do this, whereas only 21% of leaders utilize that option. 

IDC surveyed 626 digital experience decision makers in the U.S., Canada and the UK in May 2022.