The COO is drowning in spreadsheets, reports, and even graphs, but not many are using data as a weapon.

What do I mean by that? Well, data is not just numbers. It’s not just tables and rows. It’s not even just graphs and pretty pictures.

It’s all about intelligence. It’s all about intuition. It’s all about patterns. It’s about unearthing what is actually going on, preferably in real time, rather than relying on a monthly report that’s already a month out of date.

What’s the point of that? You can’t affect the future if you’re always looking at the past.

Data is needed to predict the future. And, of course, these days, that’s more feasible and achievable thanks to the great AI technologies we have available to us.

When you see the patterns in the data, you see the future.

Every good COO needs to see the future because then you can plan. You can do something about it. You can be prepared. Who wouldn’t want to be prepared?

You see, data is not reporting. Data is foresight. Data is risk management.

Data is the COO’s secret weapon.