Data analysis is a powerful tool to help you achieve your business vision, but it can also be overwhelming and confusing if you don't have a clear strategy and process. In this article, you'll learn how to connect data analysis to your business vision in six steps, from defining your goals and questions to communicating and acting on your insights.
Before you dive into data analysis, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve and why. What is your business vision and how does it align with your mission, values, and objectives? What are the key performance indicators (KPIs) that measure your progress and success? What are the specific questions that you want to answer with data analysis? By defining your goals and questions, you can focus your data analysis on the most relevant and impactful aspects of your business.
Success in goals and metrics requires alignment and integration across the organization. Having top level objectives that multiple parts of the organization can contribute to helps ensure that teams build key metrics that are connected to the company's most important efforts.
I am a firm believer in strategic based planning. So that everyone knows where you a company, department and individual need to be, how you plan to get to that point and when you expect to arrive. Data analytics is a powerful tool, sadly underutilized in the work place, which can be used, not only to determine your strategic objectives but also, where you as a company, department or individual are. It can be used to track progress as well as results. And this is just looking at the power of data analytics on an internal scale. Comparitive data of competing companies, for example, can be a powerful motivator.
Sometimes defining goals is not as easy as identifying the specific questions. You need to dive deep into the current situation of the company, project, kpi, etc. Further, you need to understand the ideal state where these should reach. Generating insights on how these gaps can be bridged helps identify and set hypothesis which are more closer to the real world.
?? I recommend that you proceed as follows: 1. Conduct a SWOT analysis of your business. 2. Based on the SWOT analysis, create a TOWS matrix. 3. Come up with as many ideas as possible for the TOWS matrix. In my experience, the hardest part is coming up with ideas at the intersection of your project's weaknesses vs opportunities and threats. 4. Next, rank the ideas you receive according to the criteria that work best for you. My default criteria are Time, Cost, Scope, Resources, Risk and Quality. 5. Select the highest priority of these ideas and use them to assign tasks to your analytics system. At the end of these 5 steps you will have a link between your project, market, business development goals and questions for further analysis.
Once you have your goals and questions, you need to identify where and how you will get the data to answer them. Depending on your business and industry, you may have different types of data sources, such as internal databases, external platforms, surveys, interviews, or observations. You also need to decide what methods and tools you will use to collect, store, clean, and analyze your data, such as spreadsheets, software, or online services. You should choose the data sources and methods that are reliable, valid, and ethical.
?? If you're a start-up - don't look too early for advanced systems to collect and analyse data. Start by not wasting time on meaningless conversations, start by exchanging information in writing and follow up. For a mature business - collect information by source: - Marketing and Sales (CRM, CMS, ticketing system); - Finance (accounting system); - Production (task trackers, project management systems, development environments, databases); - General (email and messengers). This is more than enough to get you started. Then you can start cleaning and analysing the data. Keep the human factor in mind - both in terms of data accuracy and respecting people's privacy.
The next step is to analyze your data and generate insights that answer your questions and support your goals. This may involve applying various techniques, such as descriptive, inferential, or predictive statistics, to summarize, compare, or forecast your data. You may also use visualizations, such as charts, graphs, or dashboards, to display your data in a clear and engaging way. The main purpose of data analysis is to generate insights that are relevant, accurate, and actionable for your business.
More often than organisations like to admit, the data collection process requires much work and thence, causing downstream impact on data cleaning and eventually stalling activities such as data analysis. Analysis always requires a question(or a series of questions). And with the 'end' in mind, analysts can put into important visuals on how best to communicate said findings. And in the steps of data expression, we have to remember that Less is Definitely More. Get the data, put it up in palatable visuals only to communicate the findings to answer the question(s) asked. If the entirety of the information in the dataset is present (sometimes 'as-is') on your visualisations, none of it is important.
After you have generated your insights, you need to evaluate them and validate your assumptions. This means checking the quality and reliability of your data and methods, as well as the logic and evidence behind your insights. You may also need to test your insights with experiments, feedback, or other sources of information. By evaluating and validating your insights, you can ensure that they are based on sound data analysis and not on biases, errors, or opinions.
The next step is to communicate your insights and recommendations to your stakeholders, such as your team, clients, or partners. You need to tailor your communication to your audience, using the appropriate language, tone, and format. You also need to highlight the key findings, implications, and actions that relate to your goals and questions. You may use different channels and formats to communicate your insights, such as reports, presentations, or online platforms. The main goal of communication is to inform, persuade, and inspire your stakeholders to act on your insights.
It is vital to generate insightful findings and present them visually and persuasively. Once you've distilled your analysis, the key step is crafting a clear narrative to ensure understanding, even among non-specialists. The art of storytelling, therefore, emerges as a pivotal skill that necessitates acquisition. Effectual storytelling is characterized by its ability to captivate and resonate with the audience, transcending subject-matter boundaries. In this regard, the integration of interactive visualizations within a dashboard format emerges as an optimal method for conveying complex information in an accessible and impactful manner.
The final step is to act on your insights and monitor your results. This means implementing the actions and recommendations that you derived from your data analysis, such as launching a new product, improving a process, or changing a strategy. You also need to measure and track the outcomes and impacts of your actions, using the KPIs and metrics that you defined in the first step. By acting and monitoring, you can close the loop of data analysis and see how it helps you achieve your business vision.
Not all KPIs are persistent, some KPI, of course, will stand the test of time. As the business changes and evolves, new KPIs are born, some existing ones evolve or become obsolete. Periodically measure the relevance, priority and effectiveness of each KPI to the current business and the future. And then design BI solution’s to support KPI life cycle management.
?? In the rush to implement and configure analytics, it is easy to get bogged down in the details and overcomplicate the process. Never forget that there are many people and companies around you who have successfully tackled the challenges you face. Don't hesitate to reach out to the experts: your partners, mentors, experts and consultants - or even just people you know. You will broaden your horizons, avoid many mistakes and shorten the distance to your goal.