Data collection and data science is becoming big business. Not just in telco – our OSS have always been one of the biggest data gatherers around – but across all sectors that are increasingly digitising (should I just say, “all sectors” because they’re all digitising?).
Why do you think we’re so keen to collect so much data?
I’m assuming that the first wave had mainly been because we’d almost all prefer to make data-driven decisions (ie decisions based on “proof”) rather than “gut-feel” decisions.
We’re increasingly seeing a second wave come through – to use data not just to identify trends and guide our decisions, but to drive automated actions.
I wonder whether this has the potential to buffer us from making key insights / observations about the business, especially senior leaders who don’t have the time to “science” their data? Have teams already cleansed, manipulated, aggregated and presented data, thus stripping out all the nuances before senior leaders ever even see your data?
I regretfully don’t get to “play” with data as much as I used to. I say regretfully because looking at raw data sets often gives you the opportunity to identify trends, outliers, anomalies and patterns that might otherwise remain hidden. Raw data also gives you the opportunity to riff off it – to observe and then ask different questions of the data.
How about you? Do you still get the opportunity to observe and hypothesise using raw OSS/BSS data? Or do you make your decisions using data that’s already been sanitised (eg executive dashboards / reports)?