Open Text : Reacting to COVID-19 based on a data driven strategy

When COVID-19 entered our lives, companies were worried about how it would impact their business. As the year progressed the concern shifted to how big that impact would be. The impact on business has varied, depending on the sector, activity, country and customers, but what is clear is that the market has changed. Customers have changed, their buying habits have changed and the products sold have changed. So companies must adapt to this new situation and adapt quickly.

But these changes should be based on facts, on real information that shows what is happening in the company and the markets. So, instead of relying on best guesses, companies must look at their own data. In other words, rely on a data-driven strategy for your organization.

Organizations that properly analyze their data get answers to questions, have early access to reliable conclusions and can react faster, obtaining a better position in a competitive market.

Creating a data-driven response

How do you create a data-driven response to COVID-19? Start by discovering the impact. Find out what has changed since the pandemic began. Compare your business at the end of 2019 with your business now. What's changed across the business, your customer base, your competition. And what has remained static?

After discovering the impact, draw some conclusions. Identify the market needs by analyzing the attributes or characteristics of the current business situation. Compare how different these new business entities are from the pre-COVID-19 ones. Once you have a better idea of your new situation, you can take action. Optimize processes. Identify cost reductions. Identify campaigns and targets.

Managing large volumes of data

But when you have big amount of data, this is not an easy task. One of the problems you can face is the capacity to manage your data to process these actions quickly and flexibly. In today's climate, organizations cannot afford to wait days or even several hours to get an answer. Organizations need systems that can quickly analyze data and answer their questions, and they need to be in a position to draw conclusions and react to them. Your system should be able to answer questions as they appear, questions that are not predefined, and again, get a fast answer.

OpenText™ Magellan™ Data Discovery can explore billions of records in seconds, without any pre-modeling or pre-defined queries, ready for business users and analysts to access, blend, explore and analyze data quickly without depending on IT or data experts or coding.

With OpenText Magellan Data Discovery, discovering the impact of COVID-19 can be easily done by segmenting your data, creating groups of orders, products, customers, etc. With a simple drag and drop, you can easily select all sales before COVID-19 and all sales during COVID-19, and then compare segments to see products, customers, orders, or any other business entity.

OpenText Professional Services have experienced experts that can help guide and advise you through this process. For more information contact us.

Author: Samuel Belmar, Senior Professional Services Consultant, OpenText