Analysis Report One - What’s Your Data Strategy

Author

Landon Wilson

Executive Summary

Many organizations today rely on data to help improve decision-making, increase efficiency, and remain competitive. This report will examine many of the concepts that were presented in What’s Your Data Strategy?(DalleMule and Davenport 2017), mainly focusing on balancing offensive and defensive strategies. Offensive strategies tend to focus more on using analytics to improve business performance, while defensive strategies lean more towards protecting data through governance, security, and compliance. This report will apply these ideas to the healthcare industry, where businesses must protect patient information while using data to optimize patient care and operational efficiency. Lastly, SQL queries and visualizations from the Northwind database demonstrated both offensive and defensive data strategies that led to recommendations on how organizations can use data to achieve long-term success.

Introduction

In What’s Your Data Strategy?, DalleMule and Davenport show that organizations should balance their offensive and defensive data strategies in order to maximize the value of their data. Offensive strategies tend to focus more on using analytics to improve business performance while defensive ean more towards protecting data through governance, security, and compliance. The authors introduced the concepts of SVOT, which stands for Single Version of the Truth, that insures there is consistent and reliable data throughout an organization. As well as MVOT, which stands for Multiple Versions of the Truth, that allow departments of a company to analyze data in ways that can help support specific goals. Working together, these strategies allow organizations to protect important information while also using this data to improve performance.

Research and Extensions

What’s Your Data Stratagy? Was published back in 2017, since then, advances in artificial intelligence and cloud computing have exploded onto the scene and have been helping organizations optimize data. In the healthcare industry, hospitals and providers are now using predictive analytics to help identify patients who have higher risk of diseases, improving treatment, and optomizing staffing. With this, there are growing concerns for cybersecurity and patient privacy that have increased importance for the use of defensive data strategies, especially as regulations have been enforced on companies by (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2025). These developments prove that the article’s argument in which organizations need both offensive and defensive stratagies for insight on how to improve performance and ensure data remains accurate, secure, and trustworthy. Recent research from organizations such as the Office of the National Coordinator for (Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology 2025) and the (World Health Organization 2025) have highlighted the incresing roles of secure, quality data in improving healthcare for patients.

Data Visualizations (Offensive)

This offensive visualization displays suppliers that are located in the southern regions based on the data from the Northwind database. The SQL query filtered supplier records by each region and the bar chart was created to show the amount of suppliers in each country in the southern region. This is a representation of an offensive data strategy as it demonstrates how organizations analyze supplier data to improve their purchasing decisions, better understand their supply chain, and identify sourcing opportunities. By using geographic data this way, businesses can make more informed decisions about operational performance.

Visualization One - Offensive

SELECT CompanyName, Country, Region
FROM Suppliers
WHERE Region LIKE "%Southern%"

ggplot(data = myquery1,
       aes(x = Country)) +
  geom_bar() +
  theme_minimal() +
  labs(
    title = "Suppliers Located in Southern Regions",
    subtitle = "Data from the Northwind Database",
    x = "Country",
    y = "Number of Suppliers",
    caption = "Source: Northwind SQLite Database"
  )

Data Visualization (Defensive)

This defensive visualization takes a dive into employees job titles using the database at Northwind. The SQL query retrieved each employee’s job title and last name, while the bar chart displayed the number of employees at each position. This is a representation of a defensive data because businesses rely on employee records to support staffing, reporting, and payroll. Maintaining reliable and consistent data on employees helps organizations better understand how to improve data quality and ensures that important information is retrievable when needed.

Visualization Two - Defensive

SELECT LastName, Title
FROM Employees

ggplot(data = myquery2,
       aes(x = Title)) +
  geom_bar() +
  theme_minimal() +
  labs(
    title = "Employee Records by Job Title",
    x = "Job Title",
    y = "Number of Employees"
  )

Recommendations for Industry

Some recommendations for the industry would be that organizations should develop balanced data strategies that combine both data strategy approaches. Investing in stronger data security, governance, and quality management could help ensure that the information a company has is accurate, reliable, and protected. Using analytics an business intelligence would allow organizations to improve their decision making while also identifying new opportunities to improve. In healthcare, balancing data strategies is important because providers protect sensitive patient information but also use th data to improve patient teatment, reduce cost, and increase their operationsl efficiency. If they treat data as both a protected asset and a strategic resource, organizations built trust, support innovation, and allow themselves to remain competitive in data driven markets that continue to increase.

References

DalleMule, Leandro, and Thomas H Davenport. 2017. “What’s Your Data Strategy.” Harvard Business Review 95 (3): 112–21.

Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. 2025. “HealthIT.gov.” https://www.healthit.gov/.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 2025. “Health Information Privacy.” https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/index.html.

World Health Organization. 2025. “Digital Health.” https://www.who.int/health-topics/digital-health.