Data and analytics are crucial for businesses who are looking to make better decisions, operate more efficiently and build great employee and customer experiences.
Though this has been true for decades, and almost every company recognises this by now, there is still a lot of work to do and a lot of opportunity to capture.
The urgency to act is also increasing. Markets are always becoming more competitive, and as the competition deploys more sophisticated uses of data and AI, having a strong capability in this area will become increasingly important.
We have launched Ensemble to help businesses respond to this situation in an accelerated timeframe, using modern technology to dramatically improve the value they get from their business data.
Our belief is that the opportunity lies in the following 3 areas:
Adoption Of Modern, Cloud Based Data Platforms
Todays data technology and the modern data stack is a very powerful platform to build upon. It is fully managed and provided as a SaaS service, it is infinitely scalable by virtue of being in the cloud, and it is paid for based on the exact amount of storage and processing consumed.
The tools, libraries and techniques for analysing and visualising the data on top of this platform are also evolving at an equally rapid rate, whilst becoming easier to use and more accessible.
In the past, large businesses had to make significant investments in infrastructure, tools and staff to build these advanced data capabilities, whilst it wasn't even an option available to smaller businesses.
Today, the same powerful capabilities are available to everyone at the click of a button. They require very little setup, and data teams can immediately become productive, analysing their own data for insights and creating business value in a very focussed way.
Implementing Sophisticated Analytics And AI/ML
Most organisations of any scale have a data and analytics capability by now, but they then tend to stop once they have implemented the basics.
This level of maturity can be described as business intelligence, where we are aggregating data to understand key metrics that are published via reports and dashboards, but aren't being particularly sophisticated or ambitious with the analytics that are deployed.
There is significant value in taking this further, using statistical and data science techniques to really extract deep insights from our datasets, then using artificial intelligence and machine learning to build predictive and intelligent models to support decision making throughout the business.
Deploying Real-Time And Operational Analytics
Most businesses use data to report on the past. Their analytics are based on historic and delayed data, and are then served through staid dashboards to managers and executives who use it to make strategic decisions over long term time horizons.
It is possible to use data in a much more operational capacity, using real-time analytics to understand what is happening right now, then using it to intelligently guide employees on the ground towards their "next best action".
When a business has this capability, they can identify and react to opportunities immediately, and solve problems before they impact customers and before they ever become visible as a KPI on an executive dashboard.
Why Ensemble
Fortunately, businesses are beginning to realise and act upon all of the above opportunities.
They realise that in order to achieve the employee and customer experiences that gain an edge in todays competitive market, they need to be much more ambitious with how they use data.
However, when they make this realisation, they are limited in where to turn for support. It is not always practical to hire expensive teams of data engineers and data scientists, whilst traditional consultancies are even more expensive and can create dependency.
We have founded Ensemble to address this gap. We want to help our clients take advantage of the opportunities associated with data, analytics and AI in an accelerated timeframe, but with a sustainable win-win partnership model.
Our model is particularly optimised for startups and scaleups, who we believe we can help to deploy powerful data and analytics capabilities whilst building a technology platform that supports their future ambitions.
If this sounds interesting, please reach out to us today for an informal discussion.