The Ledger

Curated content for
analytical business leaders

Valuing Data as an Asset

The world of data is changing fast. There is a lot of talk is swirling around about the need to value a company’s data as a business asset on its balance sheet. Data, in the right hands, is often as valuable as land, buildings, and equipment. Many organizations know very little about the value of their own data, but there are a few compelling reasons to start thinking about how to value a company’s data for accounting purposes. Relying on big data alone increases the chances of missing something, while the illusion we know everything. It can also introduce quantification bias — the unconscious belief of valuing the measurable over the immeasurable.

Read More at CFO Magazine >

 

Technology is Changing Supply Chain Management As We Know It

The supply chain is the heart of a company’s operations. To make the best decisions, managers need access to real-time data about their supply chain, but the limitations of legacy technologies can hinder the goal of end-to-end transparency. However, those days may soon be behind us. With a digital foundation in place, companies can capture, analyze, integrate, easily access, and interpret high quality, real-time data — data that fuels process automation, predictive analytics, artificial intelligence, and robotics, the technologies that will soon take over supply chain management.

Read More at The Harvard Business Review >

 

Data Operations: A New Approach

Data is now mainstream and finance leaders have realized that it can be a competitive advantage and the perception of the need to democratize it. Thought leaders of digital transformation and disruption already understand the value of proper business process modeling. Accepting that everyone wants to be data-driven, we should all recognize that data flows are nothing else but business workflows without structure. That is why it is important to bring in data operations experts for effective collaboration between product management, data engineering, data science, and business operations.

Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >

 

Rethinking Finance Processes With Advanced Analytics

Most CFOs are locked in a battle of trying to get away from a past of data in silos, single-perspective spreadsheets, limited insights, and multiple versions of data in order to steadily rebuild the foundation to strengthen its credibility with actionable intelligence across the business. Finance leaders are realizing that transparent, limitless, and thorough data is always a highly valued asset, but this data alone cannot deliver the level of intelligence CFOs want. The finance organization needs to weed out data assets and practices that may be getting in the way of the advanced analytics capability and noise-resistant information required to drive more intelligent decisions with reliable data.

 Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >