How does it feel to almost have information – but at the same time, not quite have it there? The white noise generated by everything we are exposed to on a daily basis can not only be detrimental to one’s work, but also to the welfare of an entire organisation.
For example, if you have to process several hundred applicants in a single day, several days a week, how many details could you have missed out on? In devising a marketing strategy, how many different factors (product relevance, target audience, locality) can you account for before you lose track of the end goal? When you have to train your staff, how can you make sure that you’re definitely working on their weak spots and not just on your personal bias?
While these examples concentrate more toward HR and Marketing, human error is a common denominator among all. It manifests in different ways because there’s a limit to the amount of information we can take on by ourselves.
This is where data science is set to revolutionise the way things work. These processes can take over a significant amount of back-end work for humans, leaving us with more time and effort to conduct more meaningful activities. Recruiters can go straight to working through data points created by social media, job sites, and other online means to find candidates who fit the organisation. Marketers can use analytics to generate audience insights and delve immediately into developing ways to sell their product.
Organisations based in Dubai, an emirate with a diverse population of expats and a plethora of talents, would definitely need to make a pivot towards data science. Even the local government has started moving towards improving their processes through digitalisation. The Dubai Paperless Initiative, for example, is a plan to make the Dubai Government operate completely paper-free by as soon as 2021. As part of the efforts toward making this happen, they’ve even partnered with the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) to speed up the digital transformation by working on areas of data science that are related to the financial services sector and to promote public-private sector collaboration.
As we move towards a more tech-oriented world, it’s important for us to acknowledge our limitations as human beings and to trust that technology will fill in these gaps for us.
However, focusing on data science will only be the start of our solution. It’s still a young industry, and finding the right people as well as the right data to look at is the next step. The work of a data scientist can be challenging, especially as they must immerse themselves completely in an organisation to understand how to optimise their work. Their valuable insights will surely encourage them to take seats in the C-Suite.
If you’ve ever had to deal with any sort of data science, be it through the basic online methods or with sophisticated data science teams, how did data science change the way you led your business? If not, how and where do you think it would impact your organisation best? It’s important to stay on top of the latest opinions on this trend and any insights would be welcome.
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