Why Every COO Needs a Data Strategy That Actually Works

If you're a Chief Operating Officer in 2025, you're already under the pump. You're managing operational chaos, balancing cost with service, and being asked to do more with less. Everyone wants efficiency, agility, and insight. But too often, they’re asking you to get there without the tools or clarity.

Here’s the truth. If your organisation doesn’t have a clear, business-led data strategy, you’re flying blind. And that’s not just a tech problem. It’s an operations risk.

The Data Delusion: What Most COOs Are Sold

You’ve probably been pitched shiny platforms. Dashboards. Machine learning. Digital transformation. But no one tells you the real problem. It’s not the tools. It’s the disconnect.

• Your teams are working across disconnected systems

• Reporting is slow, manual, and full of caveats

• People spend more time gathering data than using it

• You don’t trust the numbers, and neither does your board

It’s not because you’re doing it wrong. It’s because the strategy isn’t built around operations.

At Pentify Insights, we’ve worked with COOs across construction, manufacturing, financial services and venues. We’ve seen the mess. And we’ve helped fix it.

What a Data Strategy Looks Like When It’s Done Right

This isn’t just about having a data warehouse. It’s about how your organisation uses information to operate better, faster and smarter.

A practical data strategy should give you:

• One version of the truth across operations, finance and sales

• Near real-time reporting you can actually trust

• Predictive insights, not just lagging indicators

• Automation of high-effort, low-value manual processes

• Clarity across teams without needing another meeting

  
  

Let’s show you what this looks like in real life.

Case Study: Property Developer Unlocks Growth with the Right Data Foundation

We worked with a leading property development group in Victoria. They had grown fast. 26 systems, dozens of teams, but no unified data strategy.

The result? Constant firefighting. Reports took weeks. No clear view of profitability. Decisions were made on gut feel.

What we did:

• Ran workshops across business units to find the real pain points

• Built a roadmap to a single source of truth

• Cleaned and connected core systems for live insights

• Set up clear data governance without overengineering it

Outcome:

• Faster decisions at board level

• Stronger forecasting on cost and revenue

• Greater alignment between ops, finance and sales

• Freed up internal teams to focus on delivery

This isn’t theory. This is what happens when data strategy is built for COOs, not just IT.

Where Most Data Strategies Fail (And How to Avoid It)

1. Led by tech, not by business You don’t need another platform until you know what problem you’re solving. COOs must own the data agenda.

2. No clear use cases You need to start with the five or ten workflows that matter. Start small. Show value. Scale later.

3. No data governance If people don’t know who owns the data or how to use it, it won’t work. Governance is not bureaucracy. It’s clarity.

4. Trying to boil the ocean You don’t need to do it all at once. Focus on one business unit or one core system first.

What You Should Be Asking Right Now

If you’re a COO and you’re not sure where to start, here are the questions that matter:

• What reports do we rely on that take too long or no one fully trusts?

• Where are we manually transferring data between systems?

• What decisions are we still making on gut feel?

• Who actually owns the data in our key systems?

• Do our ops, finance and sales teams see the same version of performance?

If you’re unsure on any of these, that’s the signal. It’s time to get serious.

What’s the Cost of Doing Nothing?

We’ve seen it first-hand:

• Projects go over budget because cost data is days old

• Sales overpromise because they don’t see operational constraints

• Finance works weekends reconciling numbers no one trusts

• People churn because they’re stuck doing manual reporting

None of this is sustainable. You feel it already.

The First Step: Your COO-Led Data Diagnostic

We’re not going to suggest a full-blown digital transformation. That’s the kind of talk that gets budgets rejected.

We’re talking about:

• Identifying 3-5 high-impact data pain points

• Running a data diagnostic with your operations, finance and IT leads

• Building a short roadmap to tangible value in 6 weeks

You don’t need a CIO to make this work. You need someone who gets operations.

Final Thought: The COO Is the Missing Link

In our experience, when a data strategy succeeds, it’s because the COO takes charge. You sit at the centre of systems, people and outcomes. You see the cost of bad data every day.

A well-designed data strategy can give you:

• Confidence in every number

• Time back for your team

• Faster execution on your priorities

• A stronger story for your board and shareholders

Data should work for you. Not the other way around.

So if you’re ready to stop reacting and start leading with clarity, let’s talk.