The Dangers of Being Unaware of Your Data

Being aware of your data is one of the most important things in an emerging digital landscape. Without data, it’s impossible to gain a deeper understanding into the processes needed to help your business run. Not only do potential problems go unnoticed, until they bubble over into serious issues, it’s harder to protect your company against business risks when you’re unaware of the specific details in your data.  This is especially true within the corporate tax department.  When tax practitioners don’t understand the specifics of their data, the company’s risk of non-compliance with federal, international, and state and local tax codes can skyrocket.

Not all costs associated with data unawareness can be measured from a monetary standpoint, as there are also reputational risks at stake.  If your business is regularly found to be non-compliant, due to your inability to access and/or understand your data, your company’s credibility may diminish within your industry. People associate data awareness with success and best practices, so not having control in that area of your business can be a serious problem.

When one can’t capture data accurately or efficiently, the ability to perform a good risk-related trend analysis can be lost. You are also unable to gain a deeper understanding of the overall landscape your company may face to be at the forefront of your industry, especially when you consider that good data awareness has the potential to generate up to 70% more revenue for your company.  When it comes to business growth and stability, a deep awareness of data and its meaning is extremely vital.

According to IBM, both inaccurate data and inefficient data methods costs businesses $3.5 trillion a year.  The problematic data comes in the form of duplicate entries, inaccurate entries, typos and omissions in key fields. The inefficiencies generally come from workers spending up to 50% of their time just trying to find and correct problematic data.  Within the United States, the lost productivity costs alone are estimated to be $60B a year. Freeing up that amount of time and money can allow your business to utilize those resources and invest them in other areas of the company to promote growth.

If you can’t accurately capture and analyze your company’s data, you’re bound to fall behind the pack when it comes to business growth and stability. You risk losing opportunities for new customers and/or product development, which has found to be as much as 12% of a company’s total revenue.

There is no downside to effective data management, but there are serious risks when it comes to ignoring one of the biggest tools available to your business. In the current digital landscape, data management can make or break a company – don’t be left behind.