Speaker
Description
Data literacy, and prioritization are essential tools for business decision-making in the digital era. Data, among other benefits, promotes innovation, competitiveness, collaborations, and customer service and enables better decision-making without relying on intuition. Data literacy is the ability to read, analyze, use, and communicate with data. A quality and well-analyzed dataset in the hands of executives who do not understand it is a wasted resource. Businesses require data literacy to develop the appropriate mindset and data culture, manage datasets as a business asset, and design data-driven organizations. Further, data literacy drives data-driven critical thinking, learning, decisions, and the realization of value from data. Technology investments, tools, and processes without data-literate employees do not yield the benefits that businesses seek. However, despite the continued commitment and growth of data reliance in business, many organizations struggle to deliver value from their data. Some executives still rely more on experience and intuition than data due to prioritization deficiency. Prioritization entails knowing which data has the highest value and readiness and needs to be published first to support business functions. This paper provides the nexus between data literacy and prioritization by demonstrating the value of data, literacy, flow, and prioritization in business. The paper further provides suggestions to enhance this linkage. The paper adopted a literature search strategy and suggested three steps to achieve data literacy. Businesses must 1) develop sound data strategies grounded in a deep understanding of current and future literacy and business requirements. 2) Develop data literacy programs that include data literacy measurement metrics. Finally, commit resources. Resources commitment entail building strategies around leadership, a data-based decision culture, adopting the right skills-technology mix, and continuous learning. This paper contributes to understanding the value of data literacy and prioritization in business. It provides insights, guidance, and experiences from different contexts that are valuable to the development of data literacy. However, further research must be conducted to provide empirical evidence of data literacy and prioritization in African businesses.
