Tips on how to succeed in making data the king of your organization
Updated: Jan 15
Innovative organizations are using data as an asset to drive market differentiation and growth. Business success nowadays depends on Data and Analytics (D&A) capabilities that can scale with business ambitions.
According to Gartner, organizations need to improve the flow of value to customers and establish a clear connection between D&A and business value creation. To be successful in these initiatives, organizations need to develop business decision-making processes and the underlying D&A ecosystem enabling decisions.
Many organizations need help to build or improve D&A capabilities that add greater business value. According to a Global Survey done last year by McKinsey. Most executives expect their analytics activities to positively impact on company revenues, margins, and organizational efficiency in the coming years. To date, respondents report mixed success in meeting their analytics objectives. A lack of strategy or tools is not necessarily to blame for those lagging. Instead, the results suggest that the biggest hurdles to an effective analytics program are a lack of leadership support and communication, ill-fitting organizational structures, and trouble finding (and retaining) the right people for the job.
Companies need to evolve with their data to implement a D&A program that can eventually help them succeed in providing on-time business insights and AI enablement.
Following is a quick startup guide for driving the D&A program with impactful business outcomes.
Step 1: Strategy & Planning
Prioritize – Key business areas to analyze and improve
Determine – The initial business questions to investigate
Educate – Stakeholders about the benefits of business analysis
Plan – Define success, create timelines and outcomes
Build – Internal Support
Step 2: Establish and Collect
Inventory – Data sources and decide how much to include
Establish – A Master Data Management Policy
Create – A dictionary that defines standard business terms
Combine - & integrate critical data sources in a central data mart
Step 3: Clean & Standardize
Define – Acceptable standards for data cleanliness
Correct – Duplicate, missing, and inconsistent data
Standardize – Procedures to reduce future data discrepancies
Step 4: Build and Analyze
Tech – “Data-Driven Decision-Making Mindset” to shift the culture
Visualize – Data with interactive dashboards
Forecast – Outcomes with predictive analytics
Discover – Patterns and correlations through data mining
Ask – New questions with data discovery
Iterate – Through the process to refine
Step 5: Communicate and Educate
Demonstrate – Results to communicate value
Ensure – The level of detail is appropriate for the audience
Describe – The visualizations with stories
Encourage – Questions and new hypotheses
Tech – Right tools to speed adaption
Share – Success and show value
An approach can be devised to address the organization's immediate and long-term D&A needs for building or improving these capabilities. A D&A assessment can show where the most focus is needed in the above steps to accelerate the D&A program for immediate results.
As a seasoned CTO, I have assisted dozens of organizations in their D&A optimization and alignment journey, including prominent organizations in healthcare, associations, nonprofits, education, manufacturing, logistics, and supply chains. For more information and guidance, you can find me at rizwan.khan@mac.com.