?? 6 critical questions to select the right data specialist boutique
So, you’re looking to solve a pain point that requires data expertise, or maybe you are thinking about starting a new venture but don’t quite have the resources. Luckily you have many options with outsourcing a team to help you solve your data challenges, without having to hire full-time. Crunchbase alone has over 500 registered Technology agencies/consultancies in Europe. So, how do you make sure you are choosing the right data specialists to get the job done?
One of the most important things to do in your search is to ask the right questions.
We have done the research for you by asking our data expert sourcing team to tell us what questions they have found most crucial when choosing the right data experts for the task at hand. We hope this article will help you to make an informed decision about which boutique data agency can best meet your requirements and fulfil your needs.
QUESTION 1
Always start by asking “What business problem are we trying to solve through data? And what benefit will be delivered to the business by solving it?”
TIP: These are two obvious questions but all too often we have seen organisations skip them and immediately start searching for support to implement technology solutions. Focusing on the business questions first is valuable in two ways. Firstly, we give ourselves the chance to consider a wider range of solutions and suppliers increasing our likelihood to get the best results. Secondly, answering these questions help us better understand our requirements and effectively communicate those to the data agencies we will speak with.
QUESTION 2
Follow-up with the question “Will we get value by asking our suppliers to propose how to solve our data challenge? Or do we have a specific solutions or limitations in mind within which our suppliers must work?”
TIP: Quite often, organisations miss the opportunity to use the proposal phase as a learning exercise. By allowing suppliers to propose their own solutions to our problems, we get additional insights. We can compare our view against that of the supplier and validate how well we understand the problem space ourselves. We can measure how confident we should be in our own view of potential solutions. This can help us decide what level of responsibility and risk we want to give to our suppliers, versus what level of responsibility and control we want to take on ourselves to get the right solution. This will be important later when we define the contracts for engagement.?
QUESTION 3
Do a background check: Has the agency supported other clients with similar business challenges? Do they have experience in our industry??
TIP: Answering this question will help us eliminate the risk of contracting an agency that doesn’t have the right skillset, experience or industry knowledge. In addition, it increases the chances to find a data agency partner which is affluent with best practices, they know how to implement, what they should expect and where there might be any challenges.
Now this is the question that all organisations ask. However, it’s a high-level question and the key to getting the most useful answers from this question is having put in the work to answer the earlier two questions. This will enable us to compare potential answers against what you specifically find important
QUESTION 4
What is their specialism in the data space? And does it align to what you need to achieve?
TIP: The world of data is very broad with many distinct specialisms. Apart from the bigger players, most smaller boutiques will focus on specific areas. For instance: If you are suffering from poor quality data that is inhibiting your ability to automate your processes or produce reliable reports then focus on partners who have solved master data challenges (i.e. “fixing” your account or product data). If you are looking for new insights into your operations (e.g. revenue data, inventory data) then focus on partners with a Business Intelligence heritage. If you need to unlock data in core system to share with internal and external systems then you need a partner who understands a service based or API based approach to sharing data.
QUESTION 5
Is the partner able to confidently answer questions and provide you with insight into how they will manage the cost of the data solution they will be providing?
TIP: One of the biggest mistakes businesses made when moving to cloud based and “big data” platforms was not anticipating the potential risk of increasing costs due to storing and processing data in the cloud. Cloud based data platforms provide unlimited scalability but this comes at a potentially unlimited cost. One of the most important roles a data partner will need to play is advising you on how to architect and design a solution that achieves your business goals whilst doing this at an effective cost. They need to be able to push back on your Non-Functional Requirements because they will all add up. For example - do you really need realtime data updates or would an hourly batch process deliver what you need?
QUESTION 6
Are they too traditional……or are they too contemporary??
TIP: The speed of advancement in the data space over the last decade has been immense. And like with any big trend it is sold as snake-oil, the silver bullet that will solve all challenges. It is true that the cloud, modern big data patterns and the availability of advanced analytics as SaaS have been groundbreaking technological advances and democratized the availability of cutting edge data solutions. to all. But the laws of physics still exist and concepts like defining data, modelling data and structuring data still need to happen at some point in the process. So you need to find a partner who is experienced in these new patterns but is also grounded in well-established best practices about how you manage data.