Data literacy should be a priority for every organization. Investing in data skills and data literacy is critical for all companies today. Most companies have a deficit in data skills that should be addressed as quickly as possible. There are several ways to improve data skills and data literacy in your business.

1. How Do You Improve
Data Skills And Literacy
In Your Business?

2. © 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Title
Text
Introduction
Introduction
Data literacy should be a priority for every organization. Investing in
data skills and data literacy is critical for all companies today. Most
companies have a deficit in data skills that should be addressed as
quickly as possible. There are several ways to improve data skills and
data literacy in your business.
How Do You Improve Data Skills and Data
Literacy in your Business?

3. © 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Title
Text
Introduction
Introduction
How data literate is your organization? If your company is like most of
the companies I work with, your organization has room to improve data
skills and data literacy. Since we live in a world fueled by data and
businesses that have people with the relevant skills to extract insights
from this data perform much better and outperform competitors, data
literacy is one of the most important skills to build today.
How Do You Improve Data Skills and Data
Literacy in your Business?

4. © 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Data Literacy is Important for Any Business
Data isn’t beneficial to your organization until it gets put to use for your
organization. Today, you would be hard-pressed to find a business that isn’t
collecting some data that could be leveraged to improve business. Unfortunately,
too many companies are falling behind because they aren’t data literate. Data
literacy is as important to this century as reading/writing literacy was in the past
century.
Some companies have tried to increase data literacy by hiring external data experts
to join the organization. The issue with this strategy is that it is typically very
expensive and when data analytics needs to all funnel through these people with
data skills, bottlenecks are created.
I recommend you broaden out your data expertise throughout your organization.
Create the culture, build trust and provide the tools to give everyone in the
organization the ability to use data by themselves to inform decision-making.

5. © 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Barriers to Data Literacy
Oftentimes, organizations believe that if they have the data and the technology in place to
give employees access to the data, that’s all they need to improve data literacy. However,
that’s not the case. Here are some other considerations.
1. Company culture
Does your company culture support data literacy? If you have a command-and-control
environment, you might as well save your investment in data literacy because it will fail
before you even start. Cultures that embrace data literacy start from the top. The culture in
your organization needs to allow people to use data, come to conclusions about the data
and then make decisions with the data without needing to wait for approval from top
leadership before they can act. Leaders need to delegate authority to employees so they
can actually use the data and make informed decisions. Without this data-driven decision-
making culture in place, it doesn’t matter how data literate your employees are, they won’t
be able to actually make decisions and act from that literacy if you don’t allow it.

6. © 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Barriers to Data Literacy
2. Data and data exploration technology
There’s little doubt that your organization is collecting data, but is it collecting
the right data? Is the data compromised in any way? Data is vitally important for
organizations; it’s the one of the most important and valuable assets they have.
However, if your organization isn’t collecting the data it needs to achieve its
strategic objectives or if the people using the data don’t trust it, your company
will miss out on opportunities. Additionally, the appropriate technology to store
and process the data is necessary to allow everyone in the organization to
effectively use it. Data exploration tools that allow business users to map,
visualize and slice-and-dice the data are critical. You must also have an
integrated data layer tool or technology that pulls data out of silos.

7. © 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Barriers to Data Literacy
3. Data skills
In order to improve data literacy in your organization, data skills must be
acquired. There are a number of free online courses that can help give
employees data skills they need to use data productively.
Another way to improve the data skills in your organization is to partner with
outside specialists such as consulting companies or universities. I would caution
you to not completely outsource these responsibilities as it is expensive and
then you’re not building your internal expertise. However, hybrid teams that
combine your internal resources with external data science teams can help build
data skills and literacy in your organization.

8. © 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Barriers to Data Literacy
Data is your competitive advantage, so it’s important to develop data skills and literacy within
your organization. Sometimes that means adding new positions such as adata translators—this
role sits between the business function and data science team to help bridge and facilitate
conversations. This was a role we added when I helped Shell strategize and plan to improve its
data literacy.
Another successful initiative deployed by Shell, Walmart and others was to schedule regular
data hackathons that connected people from the business with the data science team. During
these hackathons, business units explain a particular business problem to learn how data and
data analytics could help them solve that problem. Walmart’s version of a hackathon are data
cafes; physical cafes where business leaders meet with data scientists to figure out solutions.
Investing in data science is one of the most important investments any business can make
today. But to make that investment deliver a valuable return, you must create the right culture,
collect the right data and help your people acquire the right data skills to succeed.

9. Bernard Marr is an internationally best-selling author, popular keynote speaker, futurist, and a
strategic business & technology advisor to governments and companies. He helps
organisations improve their business performance, use data more intelligently, and
understand the implications of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data,
blockchains, and the Internet of Things.
LinkedIn has ranked Bernard as one of the world’s top 5 business influencers. He is a frequent
contributor to the World Economic Forum and writes a regular column for Forbes. Every day
Bernard actively engages his 1.5 million social media followers and shares content that
reaches millions of readers.
Visit The
Website
© 2020 Bernard Marr , Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
© 2017 Bernard Marr , Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
© 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Bernard Marr is an internationally best-selling author, popular keynote speaker, futurist, and a
strategic business & technology advisor to governments and companies. He helps
organisations improve their business performance, use data more intelligently, and
understand the implications of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data,
blockchains, and the Internet of Things.
LinkedIn has ranked Bernard as one of the world’s top 5 business influencers. He is a frequent
contributor to the World Economic Forum and writes a regular column for Forbes. Every day
Bernard actively engages his 1.5 million social media followers and shares content that
reaches millions of readers.
Visit The
Website

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