If you’ve ever felt buried under a mountain of data, you’re not alone. Now more than ever, information overload weighs heavily on businesses. Consider these survey results from International Data Corporation (IDC):

• On a scale of 1-to-5, 40% of decision-makers rate their level of being overwhelmed by data at a four.

• Of the decision-makers surveyed, 33% noted a significant increase in available information since 2006.

As executives struggle with information overload, they also know “more” does not always mean “better”. With most of your competitors working with the same level of raw material, little competitive advantage can be gained if that material is not enhanced in any significant manner.

This sets up a perplexing problem in today’s competitive marketplace. Challenges like consumer fragmentation and channel blurring create a more complex business landscape, where the rules of the game keep changing. This ever-evolving landscape places a premium on effective analysis tools. Whether it’s assessing promotional effectiveness or core consumer behavior, the right data can help deliver much needed answers.

Companies need something more than an array of interesting data points; they need data which yields relevant insights. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. Less than 50% of available information is useful for making decisions, according to IDC. The right insights can help companies grow volume, profit, and share. It is imperative to understand the best method for discovering insights that drive step changes in your business or enhance tactical execution rapidly.

Mining for gold?
For years, industry reports have been adept at explaining what happened. But, to what degree does reporting enhance efficiency and value? If an information ecosystem is configured to predominately address the “what” of past performance, companies will risk spending a disproportionate amount of time and resources focused on the rearview mirror.

To navigate the road to success, which comes at an ever-increasing velocity, marketers must have visibility to what lies ahead. That is why insights are essential. Insights work similar to headlights; they illuminate the path ahead to reduce the risk of potential hazards. The more visibility I have, the faster I can go. With increased insights, I will be able to make faster decisions while navigating my business. Insights let companies plan effectively, and facilitate business decisions that help grow profit, volume, and share.

While data and information provide the core components to a healthy information ecosystem, the insights provide the real value. A strong ecosystem allows an enterprise to mine data in order to reveal the root cause of business drivers, but businesses must carefully guard the health of each component. (See Sidebar, The Power of Insights: How to find them fast, and make them work for you, for information on how to foster a healthy information ecosystem.)

Time lag equals business drag
The “business as usual” approach to analysis takes several days to yield results. However, when business leaders fine-tune their ecosystem with technology, they can uncover the root cause of an issue in just hours. Of course, highly-tuned ecosystems driven by technology, has proved challenging.

A significant gap exists between total data managed versus data utilized. Operating under the “business as usual” approach, one would struggle to bridge that gap anytime soon. Consider the average company’s process detailed above. The result? It takes four to five days to get actionable information. When each data element is addressed as a single instance and then brought back together, it is time-consuming and fraught with potential errors. This manual process increases the time it takes to get insights that will give you a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

But what if your business could uncover insights in a matter of hours? Imagine that same solution is easily accessible to everyone and can help guide decisions with simulations and forecasts. The result? With a finely-tuned information ecosystem, it only took hours to get actionable facts, run scenarios, formulate and implement decisions. In this approach, technology does the heavy lifting and the competitive advantage comes from advanced, behind-the-scenes analytics.

A healthy information ecosystem takes business intelligence and puts it in a business context. Because the information ecosystem puts data elements in logical information stacks, it allows the data to be staged together to address a business issue. With access to integrated information from multiple data sources, organized in logical information stacks, this sophisticated approach looks at specific thresholds to determine whether price, promotions, or other key drivers are affecting a given variance.

Using embedded analytics, the business intelligence tool does more than data mining. It evaluates the most relevant factors, so you can identify the root cause faster. This benefit reinforces the need for a healthy information ecosystem. Without it, the symbiotic relationships between each component will fail and critical insights will be lost.

Sharing insights, taking action
Businesses with a winning edge know how to adapt to market shifts by leveraging insights into action. Here are the essential steps to make that happen:

1. Share information with relevant stake holders in a seamless and most efficient way possible.
2. Ensure that everyone is looking at the same insight. To facilitate decision making, you need one version of the truth.
3. Confirm that there is interoperability between applications to execute recommended actions based on insights.
4. Allow the ability to create simulations based on the insight. This will help you understand which levers can be pulled to drive profit, volume, and share.

The real value of information rests with the ability to guide strategic decisions. To that end, the most powerful insights are:

• Shared quickly throughout the company
• Poised to guide actions that drive profitable growth

To derive swift action from valuable insights, a healthy information ecosystem is a vital necessity. A tightly integrated technology system makes nimble responses possible. Perhaps you’ve just made a change in a three-week promotion. That information needs to travel down many paths: to the Enterprise Resource Planning system, so retailers are billed correctly; to operations, so trucks are loaded properly and sufficient orders are placed; and to the sales force, which can now create new forecasts. It’s all part of a powerful information loop that’s sustained by the health of each ecosystem component.

The companies that close the information gap most efficiently and effectively will win in the marketplace. So the question becomes, how healthy is your ecosystem, and how healthy is your competitor’s?

To see best practices in action and learn how Nielsen can take you beyond data, visit www.NielsenAnswers.com.