Is your data working for you? Six tips to leverage organizational data for better insights and smarter business decisions
One way or another, we all interact with data every day, at work and at home. Have you used a streaming service recently? Netflix users continuously receive viewing recommendations based on their watch history and ratings. In this way, Netflix is as much a data science company as they are a streaming platform. Social media and other industries leverage vast quantities of user data in a similar way. Increasingly, related techniques and data management tools are available to smaller businesses.
For small- and medium-sized businesses, it’s safe to say that the road from data novice to Netflix involves a lot of work, infrastructure and expertise. When embarking on a data journey for your organization, start small and start with what you know. Generally, organizations first use data to understand the past. That process begins with learning your data – how detailed is it and what answers might it reveal? Once you have a solid foundation, you can turn to forecasting the future.
The following 6 tips can help you set that solid foundation for your organization as you begin using data to make better informed decisions and achieve your growth goals.
Tip 1. Understanding: Make sure you and your data speak the same language
Companies interested in better leveraging their data for decision making should start with data integration or getting their core data into a common platform. They should also inventory data, starting with well-known sources and exploring what is untapped. These two efforts enable organizations to set expectations and goals for the kinds of analysis they wish to perform. For example, do customers have common IDs across your billing software and your inventory system? Identifying the unique and consistent identifiers on your data is critical for data integration that will enable your team to understand the story your data tells across your organization.
Tip 2. Start simple: Optimize what you already have access to rather than jumping right to complex tools and visualizations.
While it may be tempting to move quickly, selecting new data management tools, and rolling them out to independent teams without understanding your needs, goals, and processes can lead to issues with data quality and siloed data between business units. One of the key values to having a formal approach to business intelligence within any business is ensuring data visibility for day-to-day decisions.
For example, during the height of the pandemic, many employees needed to work completely remotely. Businesses were struggling to manage this transition and understand how and when their staff were working and accessing company systems. Organizations who already had or quickly established data reporting for network logins and access were able to see where their people were, how and when they were able to work, and, once we could safely come back into offices, where they were working. The difference in leadership or board-level conversations with this data vs. without it was staggering at the time.
Remember, crawling is still progress. It may feel frustrating to go slow, but organizations don’t need an entire analytics data warehouse before they start seeing value from data, and modern Business Intelligence (BI) tools have made that much easier. It is possible to build governable data pipelines in many tools, and this governance and data “plumbing” is incredibly important for any enterprise reporting; it is the foundation. The ease of building business intelligence solutions that pull from a variety of sources can make it easier for governance to take a backseat, but understanding data quality and process is key to any full business intelligence solution. In short, dashboards aren’t the real product, but just the final step. The real products are reliable, governed and automated data management pipelines.
Narrowly scoping your starting point is important, along with identifying and understanding your key sources of data.
Tip 3. Involve the right team in data management
A key to success is building partnerships with domain experts in the business – linking the people who know the business well, like your VPs or CFO, and those who have strong technical expertise, like department heads or key managers. When you combine those two things, there’s potential for enablement and an exponential business impact.
Buy-in from leadership or the business can take time, but support and groundwork need to come from the management level and trickle down through the organization to successfully pursue a new reporting strategy.
Tip 4. The foundation: Ensure you have the proper groundwork and structure to support true Business Intelligence gains
Successful Business Intelligence programs hinge on two key elements:
- Organizational culture; and
- An appetite for strategic improvement by leadership.
At its core, Business Intelligence is about supporting decision making with informed and validated performance metrics.
Business Intelligence starts with an appetite for improvement across the leadership of your company. If you’re hearing questions or pain points about accessing consistent, reliable, operational data, this likely signals that leadership is ready to talk about BI solutions. To stay competitive, most businesses need to focus on enterprise-wide improvements that impact their overall operating strategy. A BI strategy is a core component in moving your company forward, and leadership must champion the charge.
Ensuring that your foundation is set up for appropriate reporting in the future can be time consuming at the outset, but it will pay dividends down the road. It could also be helpful to begin with a single report for a single purpose to help define a replicable process and guide future initiatives.
Tip 5: Get organized: Build a BI strategy and roadmap that aligns with your short- and long-term business goals
Start by organizing your data in one place for a single source of truth. As stated before, the primary products of a business intelligence initiative should be reliable, validated data pipelines. This approach allows maximum flexibility on a solid foundation, which is critical in an area where toolkits change rapidly. Also, data management and data integration is an ongoing effort that will continue to enrich and enhance your data estate. So, starting out with this end in mind is critical.
Having an inventory of your data and a single source of truth allows you to better answer the key questions, “What can I do with this data? What kinds of questions can it answer?”
When we talk about data-driven decision management, it’s important to understand that it’s not recommended that you let the data make the decision for you; rather, make the data available and presented in a way that it helps inform and support discussion to make the decision that’s right for the business. That is an important differentiation – that these tools are a support system, not a replacement for human insight.
Tip 6. BI assignments: Develop role-based data access to enhance usability and strategy
Defining roles and setting role-based access can dramatically amplify the impact and efficiency of reporting, ensuring the right people have the right information, and only the information they need to operate effectively.
A common example is organizations operating in a Microsoft environment where there are likely different user groups defined by staff roles. When companies start to integrate the data into a proper data warehouse or into a business intelligence tool, they can define rules to say this role gets access to this data while another role doesn’t need it. These are general best practices for identity and access management.
This approach simplifies maintenance and security, allowing user roles and groups to be validated and re-used.
From there, your team leaders and management can plan to review and take action on the insights within your established workflows for the benefit of the business.
Putting words (and data!) into action
Employing the recommendations in this article will get you well on your way toward rolling out a BI strategy at your organization. Beyond these tips, keep in mind that clarity is key: Make sure you have well-defined expectations for your systems and data and clearly established goals for what you want to get out of a BI program.
Start with your existing reporting and systems. A report that is already working effectively, or that is needed infrequently, may not be the best candidate for automation, unless it is particularly cumbersome to compile. In most cases, companies should consider the level of effort required, how often the data is needed, and what benefits it could provide.
As you set routines for reporting and reviewing data, consider where there are gaps or questions, particularly on a recurring basis. This is where a new approach, data model, or tool may be a benefit.
Finally, it is essential to have the right resources to support this process, whether they are internal or involve engaging a consultant to identify the source systems and develop a plan for migrating into an analytics accessible warehouse or directly into a BI tool. You may already have BI specialists on your team or third-party advisors who are helping with BI strategy. Business Intelligence is a growing area and it isn’t going away; it is becoming increasingly important for organizations to have dedicated resources to manage it correctly.
At the end of the day, these are not just data or technology solutions; these are business process solutions. When an organization can recognize that data is an asset, and data management can be an integral part of how an organization is run, they will be able to make better-informed strategic business decisions. If you are looking for a place to start, the BNN technology and data strategy advisors are always available to answer questions or discuss your needs to find the right solution for your organization.
If you have any questions on Business Intelligence or would like to discuss a strategy for your organization, contact Darren Fishell.
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Disclaimer of Liability: This publication is intended to provide general information to our clients and friends. It does not constitute accounting, tax, investment, or legal advice; nor is it intended to convey a thorough treatment of the subject matter.
