How B2B companies can overcome data overload with insights and intelligence

Modern business culture prizes data highly. Our decisions need to be data-driven or evidence led. The digitalisation of commerce, culture and the physical world renders this possible and helps ensure we’re always able to justify what we do on the basis of figures. The idea of making high-value decisions based on gut-feel, what we’ve always done or ‘taking a punt’ seems old-fashioned and wrong.

But the idolisation of data has unfortunate consequences. We’re hooked on real time dashboards, always-on news streams and a flood of fresh alerts to yet more data on every device we possess. When will we get round to doing any real work?

There are two parts to the problem. First, there’s information overload. A brimming inbox, chat channels and news reports. A list that never seems to be emptied. We find that there is no single source of truth, but many. This is commonplace. A Gartner survey found that 38% of employees say they receive an excessive amount of communication, with more than a quarter (27%) saying they feel at least somewhat overwhelmed by information.

The actual volume of information might be endurable, even helpful, if it were concise, relevant and consistent. Unfortunately, this is not the case: employees and leaders both report high levels of duplicated communications, many of which aren’t relevant to what they do, or which contradict or conflict with other information. And much of what we receive imposes a further burden that soaks up our productive time.

The ability to make decisions is impaired when the foundations for those decisions are revised before we can put them into action, or the multitude of streams conflict. The time and concentration levels needed for deep work are eroded by the continual ping-ping-ping of fresh data drops.

Insights and intelligence are the outputs that people are looking for when they seek out data and information.

They aren’t the same thing, at all. Data and information are raw, heavy and complex, and while they have been processed, they’ve not been organised into useable conditions.

By contrast, Insights are intelligence draw meaningful conclusions drawn from data and information. They are the ‘a-ha’ moments of realisation, spotting the pattern, understanding the right questions to ask, putting it into context, and the line of attack that will create an advantage.

Many times, people never get to these moments, they simply lack the ability to make informed decisions as they only have the data. The modern office Sisyphus is compiling daily and weekly reports that are unread and become irrelevant at the moment they are completed.

Helping clients turn data into useable insights

Realising that businesses are potentially awash in data but lacking the times or the means to analyse, contextualise and make usable is something that helped crystallise the idea for an Archetype Insights and Intelligence offering.

There are lots of things our clients need to understand but they do not have the time or headspace to do the necessary research. Maybe it is something as simple as a weekly one-pager on news and ideas in any given sector. Perhaps it’s a 10-page report on what looks like a fascinating new trend emerging among customers. Or even a high-density 20-minute conversation bringing you up to speed on a new piece of regulation, the state of science regarding areas of activity, or what competitors are doing.

We can take the raw data clients are generating, whether in the form of internal reports, performance metrics, market analysis, or even financial statements and come back with the practical and actionable insights and intelligence you need.

We love a challenge that’ll stretch our brains, and the opportunity to create bespoke solutions that speak to clients’ individual needs. Get in touch and see what we can do to help.