The importance of data in managing a business through uncertainty

During the past few weeks corona virus has been spreading all over the world. Securing the health of people and stopping the virus are most important tasks at the moment and succeeding in these tasks will require heavy, fact-based and responsible decisions from governments, companies, health care institutions and also individuals. In addition to the threat to our health, corona crisis will cause a dramatic domino effect to our society, economy, businesses, education system, services and employment. The situation can change quite quickly and decisions need to be made fast, as we have seen this week in Finland.

Many companies are now facing a new unknown situation or even a business crisis. There might be issues with availability of raw materials and components, manufacturing capacity, logistics, sales, cash flow and availability of employees, among others. There might be industry wide restrictions happening, as we have seen in the travel industry. Leading businesses through uncertainty may feel like being in a fog and it is hard to find relevant insights or solutions from historical data. Let alone utilize the same predictive models as before in trying to estimate what is going to happen next.

 

The problem might also be that there is too much data and information, not knowing where to focus. At the times of crisis, the flow of information and news might seem overwhelming. Emotions and intuition start again to steer the decisions and actions instead of using data and common sense. Unbiased and informative data visualizations or transparent predictive models might, however, bring more clarity, comfort and control into the situation.