Data maturity: key to SME growth and sustainability

In our opinion, the situation is even worse at the Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) level. SMEs tend to have fewer resources and less expertise compared to larger organizations, which makes it harder for them to effectively leverage data as a strategic asset. Additionally, SMEs often lack the budget and internal infrastructure to invest in data maturity, which hinders their ability to innovate, grow sales and improve customer experience.

Additionally, most SMEs rely on manual data gathering methods, such as excel sheets, which is be time-consuming, prone to errors and do not provide the flexibility and scalability needed to generate insights and make data-driven decisions. Furthermore, many SMEs struggle to integrate data from multiple systems and APIs, which leads to siloed data and difficulty in combining data for analytics and data point of view. Machine learning is often out of reach for SMEs due to lack of expertise and resources. These issues further impede SMEs from achieving data maturity and creating value from their data.

Furthermore, SMEs are also more likely to face challenges when it comes to data governance and security. They may not have the same level of security measures or compliance requirements as larger organizations and therefore, data breaches and data leaks are more likely to occur, which leads to reputational damage and financial loss.

In conclusion, SMEs are at a greater disadvantage when it comes to data maturity and creating value from data. They need to find ways to overcome the challenges they face and invest in data capabilities in order to stay competitive and achieve key outcomes. This includes forming partnerships with larger organizations and tech companies, investing in training and exploring cost-effective solutions for data governance and security.