83 % of data-driven businesses gained critical advantages during the pandemic.

The survey states that data-driven organizations are more optimistic about the future health of their business than non data-driven organizations.

Tableau Software, the leading analytics platform, today announced a new study developed in conjunction with YouGov, to explore how organizations in Asia Pacific and Japan have used data during Covid-19. The findings reveal that data-driven companies in India are more resilient and confident during the pandemic, compared to non data-driven companies. Eighty-three percent of data-driven companies in India have reported reaping critical business advantages during the pandemic. The survey revealed that being data-driven delivers multiple and vast benefits to businesses, including more effective communication with stakeholders (62 per cent); making strategic business decisions faster (58 per cent); increasing cross-team collaboration (56 per cent) and making their business more agile (48 per cent). Being data-driven is also fueling optimism in uncertain times as more data-driven companies (76 per cent) are optimistic about the future health of their business in the next six months than non data-driven companies (37 per cent). In contrast, non data-driven companies are slower to grasp the importance of data as they navigate through the pandemic, with only 45 per cent of them seeing it as a critical advantage. This demonstrates that there remains a disconnect in how businesses value and use data, and the potential for organization's to benefit from a more data-driven approach. "Data is emerging as a differentiator in the uncertain environment of 2020. While businesses in India continue to weather the pandemic, the survey points to a 'data divide' where organizations differ in their ability to leverage data as a strategic asset. This divide will only continue growing if businesses in India don't act now to empower people with data and make their existing asset actionable. Going into 2021, businesses need to view data culture as a must-have as they navigate through the pandemic and seek out growth," said Anand Ekambaram, Country Manager, Tableau India. Data-driven companies will continue to place importance on investment in data skills - 86 per cent of data-driven organizations in India are eager to increase or continue their existing level of investment over the next six months the highest in the region. However, 26 per cent of non-data driven organizations opted to either reduce or not invest in data skills at all. Across all survey respondents, the top lessons learnt from the pandemic include the need for data transparency (53 per cent), better data quality (52 per cent), followed by investment in data skills (47 per cent). "What gets measured gets done and if I may add, what gets measured and reported gets improved. Our data and visualization driven strategy enabled us to create a single version of truth in critical areas like cash flow, inventory, delivery lead times besides operations, that drove our ability to stay close to customers, run our operations and simultaneously drive improvement across multiple fronts," said Sarajit Jha, Chief Business Transformation and Digital Solutions Office, Tata Steel. Commenting on the importance of data skills, Lakshmi Narayana, Tableau User Group Ambassador said, "In my career in data, I have found that understanding data and integrating it into everything we do as a business is imperative as we now enter the data era. If every individual is given the empowerment and training to develop their data skills it will allow your organization to make decisions faster and stand out in a competitive landscape. India saw the highest percentage of companies who will increase their spending on data skills training (43 per cent), above the APJ region average of 31 per cent. Across APJ, only 62 per cent of business leaders classify themselves as being data-driven, while close to one third (34 per cent) believe their businesses are not. Singapore companies take the lead with the highest proportion of data-driven organizations (67 per cent), followed closely by India (66 per cent), while Japan lags in the region (51 per cent). The results point to an opportunity for more businesses to harness data to support business resilience and decision-making, now and in the post-pandemic world.