What does pandemic unpreparedness have to do with information, you might ask? I had already written that data science was quarantined during the pandemic because models trained on past data were no longer effective at predicting demand and supply. That problem is easing, but I suspect it is still manifested in our screwed-up supply chains.
But a new survey sponsored by IBM suggests that there is a bigger issue—companies simply couldn’t get the information they needed during the pandemic in order to make key decisions (disclosure: IBM contracted with me to help design and analyze the survey). It may even be that the lack of good, timely information for decision-making is a major factor in all the other problems we’ve faced during the pandemic. The global survey of 750 IT executives across ten countries had multiple questions about the impact of the pandemic on companies’ information environments. 90% of respondents agreed that “The pandemic put pressure on our IT department to deliver information quickly about our fast-changing business environment.” Similarly, 92% agreed that “Due to drastic changes in customer behavior or other factors during the pandemic, reliable real-time data became even more important for business decisions.” No surprise thus far, I suppose. This news was spoken by Tom in jan13, 2022 and added the image about how installing an undersea fiber cable and this incident was occurred in Nigeria for these changes whose responsible for that.
But many companies didn’t fare well under the pressure of the pandemic. 36% agreed that, “During the pandemic, there was information that my IT department was unable to provide to business users for effective decision-making.” And when asked, “During the pandemic, to what extent was there information that existed within your organization but was not usable by the business?,” 84% answered either “to a great extent” or “to some extent.” This is big news; companies were facing one of the most significant crises of the Information Age, and to a large degree, we fell short in providing information to navigate through it.
More generally, 95% of respondents agreed that, “A business or societal crisis highlights the need for a flexible and responsive reporting and analytics environment.” Whether the crisis is a war, a recession or depression, or a pandemic, virtually every IT executive agreed that such environments make data and analytics more critical to a successful response. Turbulent environments require better information, and something is wrong if IT organizations can’t provide it.
What’s the Underlying Problem?
You are probably interested in why the information couldn’t be provided or was unusable, as was I. So here are the reasons provided and the percentages selecting them:
The data could not be provided in the needed timeframe, 40%
Data could not be readily assembled and integrated, 39%
The appropriate internal IT resources were unavailable, 38%
The raw data was not available when necessary, 32%
Business teams needing data didn’t have necessary access, 30%
Outsourced IT resources were unavailable or too expensive, 30%
These are surprising results. They suggest that companies for the most part had the necessary data, but many couldn’t make it available to the business users who needed it. Either it took too long, required too much integration or programming—either by internal or outsourced resources, or access wasn’t possible. Some firms had several of these problems.
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