Data vision for MSMEs
Written by H.Thirukkumaran
Never confuse convenience with custody. SaaS provides the service; your data should remain your asset.
This post is a follow up post to my previous post Reimagining IT for Indian MSMEs which outlined the vision of the applications to be developed by MSMEs in India and emerging market. This post will outline the data vision for MSME’s. MSME’s should choose SAAS applications if it fits their requirements instead of trying to build in-house applications. Forming an IT team is a strategic decision not a tactical one. Only when companies understand how technology has help them navigate the future they should hire the developers, project managers and other IT roles to build in-house applications.
Convenience has created a blind spot: many companies don’t retain their own data beyond SaaS. The data in the SAAS is your data and you need to store it in organized way. When you buy a SAAS subscription for your pricing plan check if the SAAS has a rich set of API to pull the data from the SAAS or they have data connectors that will help you connect and extract the data from the SAAS. SAAS is a vehicle, not the destination. Your data is the luggage — always carry it with you. Many MSMEs do not have the copy of the data. MSMEs need to have a control tower that will help the management look at data from various business functions and systems and applications and understand the ground reality.
Cultivate the culture of data ownership across all departments no.
A centralized data warehouse is a must for companies no matter what size they are if they are using software that stores data be it inhouse applications or SAAS. In the AI age companies are getting carried away by the automation done using AI and forget that data is the moat for their business. Data is the legacy of their company. Many companies do not have well defined processes and hence no well defined KPIs and as a result do not collect useful data that conveys the problems and bottlenecks.
Data is the moat and the mirror
Data plays a dual role in every modern organization: it is both a mirror and a moat. As a mirror, data reflects the true state of the business—revealing how customers behave, where processes break down, what decisions worked, and what did not. It removes guesswork and exposes reality, even when that reality is uncomfortable. As a moat, data becomes a long-term competitive defense; when owned, retained, and compounded over time, it creates insights, learning, and context that competitors cannot easily replicate. Companies that treat data merely as operational exhaust miss this power—those that treat it as both reflection and protection build clarity today and resilience for tomorrow.
Everything is data
To build a data-driven culture companies must do the following.
First, encourage intentional data capture. Teams should assume that every action, exception, and outcome is worth recording—whether it’s a machine stoppage, a manual override, a delay reason, or a quality deviation. The question should shift from “Do we need this data?” to “Why would we ignore a signal?” This mindset turns daily work into measurable inputs.
Second, establish data quality and veracity discipline. Not all data is equal, so teams must learn to validate it: check sources, timestamps, completeness, and consistency. Ownership matters—each dataset needs a clear steward responsible for accuracy and context. Bad data should be flagged, not hidden, and corrected at the source rather than downstream.
Finally, close the loop by using data in decisions. Dashboards alone don’t create value; decisions do. Make data the default input for reviews, planning, and root-cause analysis. When people see their captured data influencing outcomes—better schedules, fewer defects, lower costs—the habit reinforces itself. Over time, data stops being something collected for reporting and becomes something trusted for action.
To discuss how to implement the vision to build a data-driven culture book a free 30 mins consulting meeting here.
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