Michelle Schonken, Investec

Many businesses are feasting on data, but starving for insights. According to Forrester Research, insights driven businesses are fundamentally different, transforming the information they have into value at every opportunity so that they can differentiate their products and services and offer a better customer experience.

For Canzius Pretorius, a partner in King Price’s data analytics team, running an insights-driven organisation demands that tech teams work side-by-side with the business. “If you just sit in the corner somewhere, you won’t have a proper grasp of the business’ problems and won’t be able to help them solve these challenges effectively.” The solutions are important, he says, but before you can even start talking about the tech needed to transform data into insights, you need to make sure that you have a relationship with business so that you can really understand what is happening on the ground. “If you don’t have this, none of the solutions you put in place will ever yield tangible results.”