If you’ve ever played baseball in your life, you know how much preparation, commitment and perseverance it demands. I used to play first base until my college years. Throughout my marketing career, I’ve often compared data analytics to playing a sport. Similar to baseball, your organization must be prepared, committed and have the perseverance to be successful with data analytics.
Winning a championship for data analytics is slightly different from winning a championship in baseball. There are no cheering crowds, no trophies — your reward is the business value you generate from your data. For example, the data could reveal how a key business process could be optimized or how much you spend in advertising per customer. Just like many baseball players compete in multiple tournaments a year, your analytics will go through several cycles as business priorities shift and evolve.
During each of these cycles, your organization must pass through the following milestones in the data analytics championship:
Data collection. You collect all kinds of raw data on your business operations from different sources. Much of this data will be generated automatically through your CRM. Some of your data may require thought and effort (strategy) to be captured correctly so it can address critical business questions.
Data preparation. Before you can use your data, it must be cleansed, combined and formatted for reporting and analysis purposes. Without accurate and consistent data, it’s going to be difficult to obtain valuable insights from what’s collected.
Data visualization. To monitor business performance, your data must be visualized in reports and dashboards, I like to use Google Data Studio and Tableau. By sharing this summarized information throughout your organization, managers and employees will be able to observe how different aspects of the business are performing.
Data analysis. To gain deeper insights into the business, your people will need to explore the data for potential issues or opportunities. An imperative process of data discovery will help your organization unlock insights that can lead to enhanced business performance.
Insight communication. To ensure the insights drive the right decisions and actions, they must be communicated effectively. Data storytelling opens the audience’s minds to new possibilities, using engaging narratives and clear visuals to explain key insights.
Take action. The last crucial step and the one that most people don’t complete is to decide which insights should be pursued and then implement the necessary changes. In some cases, you may deploy a test first to verify the results before making wholesale alterations. Regardless, you’ll want to assess the results after each change and learn from them.
I’d estimate 95% of companies are collecting data, and a high percentage of these organizations are also preparing reports and visualizing their data on a regular basis. However, there’s a significant drop-off at the last bracket of the championship where analytics teams perform analysis, share their insights and then implement changes to optimize the business. Most companies have no problems with the start of the data analytics championship, but many of them aren’t completing the season. In fact, they’re more likely to bail and start a new championship than see an entire season through to the end. As a result, they are constantly playing games but never win any championship.
Frequently, I run into senior executives who express frustration with the lack of value they’ve seen from their analytics investments. In most cases, their dissatisfaction can be traced back to a failure to focus on the championship finals. If your organization isn’t progressing through all of the milestones of the baseball season, a positive return will remain elusive.
How to win championships with data analytics?
Organizations must finish the analytics season to get full value from their data investments. If your company keeps restarting the season and only playing during spring training, your analytics solutions will never pay for themselves. While making it to the finals only represents 80% of the championship total season, it represents a crucial section that will decide whether you generate value from the rest of your efforts. To get your business refocused and ready to conquer the championship of analytics, I offer three suggestions:
Automate early-stage tasks. There’s a lot of hype about introducing artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities throughout the entire analytics marathon. However, the areas where it can significantly benefit organizations are in the early stages of the process. Today, there’s a host of new technologies that can automate and streamline the traditionally labor-intensive, repetitive tasks that occur in the data collection and preparation phases. If you can help your analytics team to be more efficient with the tasks at the beginning of the season, you can reallocate more time and energy to “playoffs” stage activities such as data exploration and data storytelling.
Narrow the scope. Frequently, organizations have grand visions of what they want to accomplish with data analytics. They launch large data initiatives that eventually crumble under the weight of their own ambitious scopes before any value can be generated. Rather than going high and wide with your analytics (undertaking an impossible task), it generally makes more sense to go start-to-finish with a more targeted, narrow focus. A limited scope may sound counterintuitive, but you’re more likely to generate insights and business value faster, which can build momentum for future, expanded analytics efforts.
Foster a stronger data culture. Your company’s existing data culture will dramatically impact how difficult each analytics championship will be. If your organization has a weak data culture, it’s going to feel like you’re losing games constantly. From low management buy-in to incompatible business processes and weak data literacy, multiple barriers will make progress slow and difficult. To build a stronger data culture, it must always begin with your executive team leading by example, prioritizing data initiatives and clearing internal roadblocks. Eventually, as a data culture begins to emerge, its gravity will help propel your organization through successive analytics championships trophies.
This axion applies equally well to data analytics championships. At the spring training, you need to be smart—align your data with the business strategy and lean on technology to lighten the burden. In the playoffs, you must be strong and rely on your domain expertise and analytical skills to discover actionable insights. Then lastly during the championship finals, you want your people to be inspired to act on the insights and drive positive change. Throughout the entire analytics journey, it’s imperative that you stay focused on the championship so you can fully capitalize on all the value that your data investments have to offer.