How Do You Know Your Business Problem Isn’t Really a Data Problem?

Do you see data as a cost or an investment for your company?

Data shapes your decisions, drives innovation, and underpins your competitive edge. Yet its value depends on how well it flows through your systems. The challenge is clear: data volumes are growing exponentially, and more than 70% of the world’s data is being managed by corporations. Enterprise data has grown more than 30-fold in the past decade, with an increase of 430% since 2018 alone. If data is the lifeblood of your business, your data infrastructure is the veins and arteries that carry it. Ensuring it is optimized and future-ready is critical to your very survival.

This is where regular data assessments become invaluable. They analyze how you store, process, and use your data, revealing inefficiencies and vulnerabilities in your systems. Once you gain a clearer understanding of your data infrastructure, you can address the root technical causes of business problems, and align your systems with your long-term objectives—all while managing costs effectively.

A Victim Of Their Own Success

Nothing drives this home more than a real-life example. This is where we meet our client—a technology leader struggling with a data platform that had put on a few extra pounds.

But as their influence expanded, so did the demands on their systems. What started as a state-of-the-art solution soon began to show cracks under the strain of their rapid growth. Reports were delayed more and more frequently, the numbers didn’t add up, and their platform costs spiraled. This wasn’t simply a technical issue to be resolved—it threatened their reputation and ability to scale further.

Their Risks Became All Too Apparent

From our perspective, their challenges were familiar. Growth often exposes the limits of existing systems, especially when those systems were designed to meet yesterday’s needs. Our client’s platform scaled as their global expansion continued, but the cracks widened over time.

Data discrepancies between the reports generated by their system and their customers’ internal calculations became increasingly frequent. This gradually eroded trust in the platform and, by extension, in our client. Then, there were the platform constraints that led to performance bottlenecks. Their system struggled to process the growing volume of transactions within critical timeframes, causing delays and disruptions to critical functions such as payments and reservations. All the while, skyrocketing costs hung like a pall over their operations.

These challenges weren’t unique to our client. They’re the natural growing pains of businesses that have outgrown their data strategies. Left unchecked, these issues posed risks to any business’s operational efficiency, not to mention their reputation and long-term growth potential.

Getting Back Into Shape Is a Team Effort

When this client turned to us, they needed more than technical fixes. They were looking for a partner who could help them see the big picture and develop a sound strategy for the future. Our first step was to go deep, working alongside their team to uncover the root causes of their platform challenges.

We conducted workshops, analyzed their systems, and identified critical inefficiencies. What we found were opportunities to resolve immediate issues and future-proof their entire approach to data.

The First Item Of Business: a Quick Win

Our first priority was to stabilize our client’s operations by rebuilding parts of their data warehouse and streamlining processes. This was necessary to restore trust by resolving data discrepancies, and aligning financial reports with client expectations. Optimizing their ETL pipeline ensured reports were generated on time, meeting the demands of their global client base. These quick wins helped to restore confidence in their platform and laid the groundwork for longer-term improvements.

Looking Towards the Future

To get our client’s systems fit for future growth, we devised a long-term conditioning program. We reshaped their data infrastructure with scalability in mind. We migrated some operations to more cost-effective solutions and optimized their cloud setup to reduce infrastructure costs. We also made sure that this strategic redesign supported their broader business goals by enabling new technologies to be integrated as they continued to grow. The results were transformative—their data systems were far more efficient, reliable, and scalable. At once, their focus shifted from being reactive to proactively taking the lead in their industry.

Start Your Path To Growth On the Right Foot

There are universal lessons here for all of us.

We’d say that, first and foremost, it all starts with a data assessment. Growth is exciting, but it adds complexity that you ignore at your peril. Regular data assessments will help you identify inefficiencies before they escalate, ensure your systems are scalable and cost-effective, and help you regain trust with clients and stakeholders. But it doesn’t end there. Any company looking to capitalize on GenAI’s remarkable potential must first take a hard look at its data.

Success doesn’t have to come with blind spots. By actively managing your data infrastructure, you can give it the strength and agility your business needs to take on the next big challenge.