Here's What Your Favourite Sports Team Can Teach You About Digital Transformation

Likewise, playing the data game also requires team effort. For the majority of businesses, true transformation begins when an organisation comes together to understand data and how it can make each employee’s job easier and better. Only when data becomes part of the DNA of an organisation can the full potential of it be realised.

According to IDC, 40 percent of companies across the Asia-Pacific are still managing backup, recovery, data protection, and analytics strategies at a departmental level. Businesses need to move from a siloed data management approach to an integrated one. There’s no better time than now to get all players in the business–human resources, operations, and finance, among others–in on the game plan.

2: Is Your Team Speaking the Same Language?

No matter the type of sport, a team’s ability to communicate has a direct impact on its success. This is especially applicable to rugby, where teams can go from defending, to attacking, then back to being on the defence in the span of a few seconds. Nowhere is communication within the team more vital than in the lineout. When throwing the ball from a lineout, players need to alert their team members on when and where to anticipate the ball, yet without making it too obvious to the opposing team where the throw-in will go.

As your company embarks on its digital transformation journey, effective communication between your IT team and the rest of the business is the key. Adopting a common vocabulary and equipping teams with the necessary data skill sets are essential to fostering a data-driven culture.

Management should do its part by insisting on data-based reports from all departments, instead of accepting bare opinions or gut-feelings. It is only by connecting all the key processes–problem definition, solution approach and design, and action/change management with insights from data–that organisations can fully leverage data as a strategic asset to improve existing models.

3: Build Your Winning Team

If you’re a serious sports fan, perhaps you might have felt from time to time that you could’ve made a better manager for your favourite team. Perhaps you’ve even tried your hand at drafting a fantasy team, deciding on your own unique team of players based on their skills, abilities, and areas of expertise. You would have likely considered how they fit together as a team, and made sure their strengths complemented another player’s weakness. And, while some skills could be honed, you might have also found it worthwhile to regularly check in on the transfer market.

Similarly, as the volume and complexity of your organisation’s data increases, your company may want to ensure they are adopting the most productive yet cost-effective data management model–be it on-premise, cloud, or hybrid.

In building your winning data management strategy, companies should look for a solution that can accommodate the different types of data within their organisation and assess whether this data needs to be accessed regularly or once every several years, etc. These considerations will then dictate where the data should reside. Organisations that adopt a single data management platform may find that they can get a comprehensive look at their data environment while cutting through complexities in data management, thus, facilitating their digital transformation journey.

Data, no doubt, lies at the core of any digital transformation. CIOs must invest in effective data strategies and engage themselves in the technical, organisational, and human aspects of digital reforms.

The pace of digital transformation shows no signs of slowing. Yet, many companies are still struggling to optimise their data investments and adjust to the speed of the information explosion. Given the capabilities that the right data management solutions can deliver, CIOs must make sure their organisations are not left behind. The good news is that they don’t have to do this alone, with the right data management partner, the race for the competitive advantage is still up for grabs.

Founded in 1996, Commvault (NASDAQ: CVLT) is headquartered in Tinton Falls, U.S. The company offers data protection and infor­mation management solutions to mid and enterprise-level organiza­tions worldwide