What is Data Literacy? – Data 101

In this Data 101 blog series, we explain each time what a particular term in the data world actually means. This time we're talking about ‘data literacy’. Data literacy is a skill that is becoming increasingly important in a world full of data. Yet many organisations struggle to work in a data-driven way successfully. In this blog we explain what data literacy is, why it matters, and how you can improve data literacy in your organisation.

TL;DR: Data literacy is the ability to understand, analyse and communicate data effectively, enabling individuals and organisations to work in a data-driven way and make informed decisions.

What is data literacy?

Data literacy is the ability to understand, analyse and communicate data effectively, enabling individuals and organisations to work in a data-driven way and make informed decisions. It involves skills such as:

• Critical thinking: analyse data, ask questions and draw logical conclusions.
• Research: find, assess and use relevant data for specific goals.
• Data analysis: apply methods to transform and interpret data.
• Data visualisation: create and use charts, diagrams and other ways of presenting data visually in the most understandable way possible.
• Data storytelling: use data, visuals and stories to persuade or inform others.

It's not just about technical skills, but also about a culture of using data. Data-literate people are curious, look for answers, share insights with others and enjoy working together. Data doesn't scare them; they embrace it as a source for learning and making decisions. Data literacy is also essential for creating a data democracy. Data democracy means making all primary data available to everyone in the organisation. This is only possible if everyone in the organisation can also interpret and analyse the data. The considerable advantage of a data democracy is that the entire organisation can contribute to innovation and growth based on facts and data.

Why is data literacy important?

Data literacy is important both at an individual level and for organisations, offering many benefits:

• Better decision-making: organisations are better able to make data-driven decisions instead of relying on intuition or gut feeling.
• A clearer picture of ROI: with data literacy, you can accurately measure the impact of (your) actions, projects and investments and link them to the right causes.
• Employee satisfaction: working with data creates more trust, transparency and a sense of responsibility among employees. They can also make the results of their work visible and learn from them.
• Better customer experience and satisfaction: data literacy can help you understand your customers better, for example by offering personalised and relevant solutions based on data. It can also help you collect customer feedback and improve customer loyalty by acting on it.
• More innovation: data literacy helps you identify and seize new opportunities, solve problems creatively, and generate new ideas and insights. It also keeps you up to date with the latest trends and technologies, so you can respond to them faster than the competition.

Concrete examples for organisations

Data literacy can have a positive effect in every part of an organisation:

• Marketing: by analysing customer data and purchasing behaviour, a marketing team can create targeted marketing campaigns. This results in an improved ROI and more focused decisions.
• Operations: by using data analysis, organisations can identify which processes are inefficient, for example in the supply chain. These often cost time and money. By optimising these processes, you can reduce operational costs.
• Customer Service: a customer service team analyses customer feedback and recognises patterns. This gives them better insight into the problems so they can tackle them faster, which in turn leads to greater customer satisfaction.
• R&D/Innovation: organisations use data to recognise market trends and spot new opportunities or improve their product. This helps them maintain their competitive advantage or launch new innovations faster.
• HR: an HR department can use data to measure employee performance. This allows them to make evaluations measurable and support employees better.

How can you improve your data literacy skills?

Improving your data literacy skills isn't as difficult as it seems. There are plenty of resources and tools available to help you learn and practise data literacy, such as:

• Online courses and platforms: many online courses and platforms offer data literacy training, such as DataCamp, Coursera, edX and Udemy. These can help you learn the basics of data literacy at your own pace and convenience.
• E-mergo Academy: at the E-mergo Academy, we offer several training courses in the field of data analytics: Data & Analytics Basics, Dashboard Design, SQL, KPI Masterclass and Dimensional Modelling. These help you take your first steps in working with data and improve your data literacy. We also offer learning paths that bundle several of these courses.
• Data tools and software: there are many data tools and software packages that can help you work with data, such as Power BI, Qlik and TimeXtender. These help you access data, analyse and visualise it, and then communicate with it in a simple and interactive way. At the E-mergo Academy, we also offer a wide range of workshops where you can get to know these tools.

Want to improve your data literacy skills? Then it's a good idea to start with the basics, stay curious, and gradually dig deeper into topics you find interesting. There isn't one single way to improve your data literacy, but there are endless opportunities to deepen your knowledge. You never stop learning. The more you work with data, the more data-literate you'll become. And the more data-literate you are, the more value you can get out of data.

Conclusion

Data literacy is a skill that is becoming increasingly important in a world where organisations are working in an ever more data-driven way. To work in a data-driven way, it is essential for an organisation that everyone within it recognises the importance of working with data. Data literacy is the key to success here, because it creates ownership of data-driven working. Employees who take a critical view, can do research, analyse and visualise data and draw conclusions from it will embrace working with data more quickly and feel responsible for it. Data literacy enables organisations to use data effectively, regardless of department or industry. After all, the (competitive) advantages of data literacy are countless. So get started and make yourself or your organisation more data-literate.