complete, connected and cloud: the 3 Cs for unlocking your data

Data is an organisation’s most valuable asset in today’s world, but without the means to harness its potential, many organisations are missing out on the opportunities it presents. Understanding how to maximise the value of data can enable better business decision making, provide better customer experiences and help organisations prepare for, and adapt to, change.

Dr Steve Nuttall, Fifth Quadrant’s director of CX research, sat down with Thomas Lai, Boomi’s VP & GM of APJ to discuss how organisations can leverage their data assets to enable smarter business making. According to Lai, there are three key factors imperative to unlocking data’s potential:

1. having accurate, consistent, and complete data. At a foundational level, organisations need to have the right information at the right level of quality and maintain these datasets to utilise them.
2. having a platform to connect and consolidate often disparate data sources and system applications in one place to enable a holistic view; and
3. moving data onto the cloud to enable scalability and automation.

Boomi’s intelligent integration and automation platform is one solution that can assist organisations with connecting, managing, and automating their data. Lai explained that Boomi provides “the ability to enhance that data and change the quality of it, so it’s more consistent and accurate, as well as create an automated environment by which to manage that.” Data management is a dirty word in his view, but he believes its integral to a good outcome for organisations wanting to harness their data and ensure that the data is useful for the end user – whether that’s internal or the consumer; with this being Boomi’s primary goal for its customers.

As data becomes more abundant, organisations are increasingly adopting data-driven decision making. Lai defines data-driven decision making as having the ability to stitch together historic, operational, and trading partner data, and the means to manage it, to make smarter business decisions and provide better outcomes. Looking at it in the context of using data to improve customer experiences, Lai provides the example of retailer Munro Footwear. As a result of the pandemic, customers could no longer come instore to try on shoes, but customers were still looking to purchase. Marrying together their instore, POS system, supply chain and ecommerce data, Munro Footwear were able to deliver a seamless ecommerce experience for customers.

Australia still has some way to go in terms of digitising experiences for consumers, according to Lai, but he thinks this is an opportunity for more organisations to create lifetime customer value by taking the friction out of the experience. However, security is an important factor in delivering this, ensuring customers feel confident in providing their information to enable these digital experiences, particularly considering recent, high profile data breaches in Australia.

Boomi indicates that security is a key focus area, working on being at the cutting edge of capabilities for prevention, quick diagnosis, and reaction, to help organisations deal with the ongoing battle of data security. Similarly, another area that is a focus for Boomi is productivity, specifically automation, and how they can integrate more automation, such as integration suggestions enabled by machine learning, into their platform to enable organisations to unlock further productivity.

By providing further capabilities to Australian organisations through their platform, Boomi is hoping to assist with neutralising Australia’s ongoing challenge of talent shortages. Additionally, from a wider industry perspective, Boomi is also looking to partner with organisations and educational facilities to push the training and certification aspects of their business, which they have underplayed in most markets, but Lai feels could be an asset here.

Ultimately, Boomi wants to help each of its customers maximise the value of their data. Whether that’s via providing the ability to access and leverage data to enable better decisions and customer experiences, or via investing in capabilities such as automation and data security to enable wider market opportunities; they are providing opportunities for organisations to unlock data’s potential.

Click here to download Boomi’s State of Digital Transformation APAC report, commissioned by Fifth Quadrant, to find out how companies in APAC are progressing on their digital transformation journey.

For all your CX research needs, click here to contact Fifth Quadrant.