Understanding data isn't a math skill - it's a life skill

Every morning, the warehouse operators at one of Asia's leading healthcare services providers gather around a computer for a meeting. As part of the company's logistics and supply chain operations, they are responsible for delivering medicine to clinics and hospitals in a timely manner, while anticipating potential shifts in their inventory portfolio. It's a tall order to make healthcare accessible across Asia for millions of patients. Their solution? Look at the data.

At first glance, these operators seem like unlikely candidates to be poring over numbers and charts. But pharmaceutical company Zuellig Pharma was determined to hardwire a culture of data accessibility throughout its ranks. For this team, using dashboard-driven analytics to inform business processes has been key.

A modern business cannot afford to operate blind. And yet data access and the skills required to understand the data are, in many organisations, restricted to business intelligence teams and IT specialists.

Getting everyone's skin in the game

The increase in data around the world is not trivial. In fact, it correlates with a transformation in the way that organisations deal with data; from managing the volatile operational demands of national vaccine administration, and critically, to the rise in new skills required of the workforce.

Closer to home, Coursera's Global Skills Report 2021 found data analysis and business intelligence tools like Tableau to be among the top 10 trending skills in Singapore. While most discussions focus on the skills shortage among data scientists, what isn't discussed enough is the skills shortage across business and operational functions.

Employees may not all interact with data to the same degree, or possess the same level of data expertise, but they should be comfortable working with data to make an evaluation, surface an insight or land on a decision.

It is about bringing together critical business domain knowledge and insights from data to the table. Think about this as the ability to interpret trends and decide on what actions to take when you look at your business on a red, amber, and green scale. Earlier last year for instance, e-commerce player Zalora were able to quickly develop a new product, TRENDER, to provide its brand partners with real-time insights and trends on sales during the pandemic. Marketers could paint a clearer picture of purchasing patterns while designers had insights that informed trending materials to work into the next season's collection.

And in the earlier case of Zuellig Pharma, with their warehouse operators now able to understand their KPIs through dashboard-driven statistics, data specialists can focus on advancing other business priorities like using advanced analytics to drive efficiencies through robotics process automation.

A blueprint for data literacy

Data literacy has become such an important change agent in this past decade, but it is not about a single tool. Data and technology alone won't make an organisation more successful. It requires a shift in mindset to create employee pull, and cultivate a sense of purpose, so that data can support operations instead of the other way around.

Leaders must also drive commitment from the top down, then scale this mission to the rest of the organisation. A good place to start is by conducting an audit to identify employees' specific needs; customise training and community programs that accommodate these styles, and create benchmarks for measuring progress. This puts data at the heart of decision making across departments and doesn't restrict innovation to just one function.

And part of this journey must include pathways to practice what is being taught. This group understands the value of building durable skills through doing. Talent is vital to any organisation and recruitment needs to call data literacy out in job descriptions and interview for this skillset.

Taking the first steps for change

Companies like Zuellig Pharma and ZALORA have fundamentally transformed the way they do business with data. The right data technology solutions for a company accommodate different job requirements and skill levels, empowering everyone to access, analyse, and share data - and then deeply explore how it supports their work.

Great software will detect what users are trying to do and prompt them with logical next steps without interrupting the flow of work. But this isn't going to be the march of machines - the workforce needs to evolve with technology through a culture that celebrates curiosity and critical thinking. Technology, afterall, holds much promise. So imagine how far it can go with a culture to match?

If events of the past year have shown us anything, it is how we are all now competing on the basis of time and information. Ultimately, it is this democratisation of analytics skills that will pave the way for more businesses to write new chapters of their own in an information-driven economy.

Indeed, data literacy should not be the skill of the few, but the muscle of the many.

The writer is senior vice president and general manager, Asia Pacific and Japan, at Tableau.