Pankaj Srivastava is the Senior Director of Azure Partner Strategy and Go-to-Market. He leads a high performing team whose focus is on ensuring optimal capacity and performance through the Microsoft partner ecosystem to support Azure sales plays execution worldwide across customer segments. In his 20+ years with Microsoft, Pankaj has done various leadership roles across Microsoft field subsidiaries, sales segments, Microsoft Research, and engineering organizations.

Digital transformation is fueled by data, and the ability to rapidly process data into actionable insights will increasingly determine who leads and lags for your industry. The world’s data is projected to grow exponentially, reaching 175 zettabytes by 2025 with a 30 percent real-time consumption rate (for comparison, global internet usage hit one zettabyte in 2016). The companies that are most capable of consuming this data at scale will have an undeniable advantage over their competitors moving forward.

While building a modern data estate is rarely easy, failure to incorporate data as a central tenet of your cloud journey will be far more costly to your organization in the long run. In fact, data-driven companies are 23 times more likely to acquire a customer, six times more likely to retain that customer, and 19 times more likely to be profitable as a result, according to McKinsey. Our customers are turning to partners for guidance with navigating their data challenges, which can result in new revenue streams for your organization both now and in the future.

Microsoft recently published a thought paper on this data-centric approach to innovation that can help your organization and customers become more data-driven. It centers on three primary objectives:

1. Propose a data-led approach as fundamental to the digital transformation journey. Unlike an application-led approach, which offers fragmented data tied to applications, a data-led approach provides a holistic view of data across the organization from source to usage.

2. Underscore the core design principles of a modern data estate. Once customers understand the value of a data-led approach, partners can step in to facilitate this journey.

3. Outline the opportunity for partners to expand the surface area of their engagements with customers and introduce new models for monetization. Companies will continue to face increased pressure to modernize their data estate and bring advanced capabilities to their businesses, providing ongoing opportunities for partners.

Partners must act quickly to build robust service offerings that expand from a primarily application approach to incorporate a data-led approach. Those that do so will have an enormous opportunity to assist customers with becoming data-driven organizations themselves.

We’re here to help every step of the way as you position your organization to capitalize on this growing need. I encourage you to review the new thought paper, “A Data-Led Approach to Digital Innovation,” and to evaluate how you can best support this data-fueled evolution. You can also watch the on-demand session from Meaghan McKeown, Partner Development Manager, delivered recently at Microsoft Inspire. I’m confident your organization and the Microsoft partner community will thrive as we work together to advance the digital innovation of our customers, both now and in the future.