Data into Insights, Insights into Action

Data has become a critical aspect of the decision making and day-to-day of nearly all industries. Product Managers are no stranger to data and its role in enhancing their team and product’s capabilities in serving the customer. This piece of prose will focus on product managers pertaining to Business Intelligence related products and services where data is their bread and butter, along with some mentions of Stoic ancient philosophy to help address some of the problems.

What is Business Intelligence?

Business Intelligence (BI) is the technology framework that enables organisations to explore, analyse and model large and complex datasets towards a major business goal of improving business performance.

Common Challenges

Often end-users see BI as a ‘magical box’ of all data and analytics needs. For BI to be able to actually address real business needs, which are different for each organisation, requiring a BI-supporting culture that spans end-to-end of the product lifecycle and process.

BI is not an extension of traditional IT infrastructure but a standalone function to help elevate business performance. However, similar to IT, BI too uses a range of applications and tools to resolve business problems with a separate focus.

• Disparate data sources and architecture:

Day-to-day issues can revolve around disparate data sources. Having to move between different applications and databases that are not connected to one and another can slow down delivery and make it more difficult to create the relevant visualisations. Incorrect data joins can lock up systems and glitch software. This is sometimes called the tension between the front-end versus the back-end of data systems. Good dashboard design can improve data usability and our interaction with data but if there are any shortcomings with the underlying data architecture will make all UX enhancements redundant. Nevertheless, the inverse is also true, great data poor dashboard will mean underutilising an organisation asset.

• Going Beyond the Pivot:

Understanding the type of platform that is needed is an important step to empower the BI strategy: different platforms offer different capabilities. Companies can go outside for a one-stop-shop solution which can be used to create the relevant visualisations and metrics (e.g. Tableau, Microstrategy, PowerBI etc.). The aim being going being the Excel Pivots for more informed decision-making analytics.

• Manual versus Automated:

Manual intensive processes lenghten deliver, but also risks data distrust given the chances of error are much higher when analysis is manual. Automated systems do not eliminate data risks either especially if the servers cannot accommodate the intensity of the tasks as well as query failings.

Turning Business Intelligence Alive in the Business Process

Data should be an exercise of action not academics. BI’s existence is not to lecture the end-user/customer what should be done but a two-way conversation addressing real-life business problems.

BI is not a series of tools, dashboards and of a list of users and customers but an umbrella platform driving to help drive business strategy. Tools and dashboards, whist certainly creating value-add for the business are the tactical, day-to-day level activities, which without an over-arching purpose and mission will fail to live up to its true potential. Simply relying on the power of the tools will fail to take BI from a reactive, descriptive function to one that is proactive in addressing problems using data-driven analytics. Proactive should not be confused with predictive of the future, BI is not a crystal ball, though predictive activities can be done using BI tools. Above we mentioned choosing the right platform and tools but BI strategy is more than just a software comparison task. Organisations need to look into themselves and decide how they wish to interact with data.

Here organisations can do several things to help energise their BI strategy:

End-user driven BI: The Stoics of the ancient had an action orientated view of pedagogy, which focused on going beyond the theories of the book. I mention this because BI Product Manager’s work is dominated by advisory related projects helping people improve business performance. Georges Pire (1958) in his Sto?cisme et Pédagogie (Stoicism and Pedagogy): Stoics saw education as an exercise of substance not forms (i.e. goal is not to accumulate facts but to act well). Seneca advised this through the Golden Rule of the Golden Mean, which advocated for instructions appropriate to the audience. For product managers in BI, these ancient philosophical ideas serves a purpose in the C21st ‘Knowledge-economy’. Data without a user lacks a purpose, both for the insights generated and the collection, storing and validating by data managers. One way my colleagues and I have been able to get an end-user perspective through cross team assignments – by going beyond the deliverable and getting to interact with the end-users with day-to-day conversations. This is aligned with the culture of Agile as well as the Scrum Team as it is an extension to the cross functional nature of product teams. Seeing how end-users interact with and use the data means a more informed BI roadmap. This is possible if the end-user is internal, but can be accomplished with customer interviews if they are external to the organisation. Empowering the customer to share their ambitions and issues with your data can better help your BI-experts to develop solutions that create closer to their problem.

Data Insights usage:

Dissemination of information stops at the last user.

We must be ready for iterations and increments of changes to the data solution. This is an important point, as a follow on from the last point because while you may have created a very sophisticated solution amounting to many story points on Jira, they are not a measure of real value. Interaction with the end-user or customer must be two-way. This can be a very difficult process and even the most automated processes become bogged down by manual changes to queries and codes; to overcome this challenge is more about will-power and perseverance than technical knowledge as it involves aligning stakeholder interests. To quote Winston Churchill, we must KBO, “Keep Buggering On”. The customer is there to teach you as much as you are there to support/consult them.

Reflections

Marcus Aurelius in Meditations said the “properties of the rational soul: it is conscious of itself, it moulds itself, makes if itself whatever it will, the fruit which it bears it gathers itself” (XI: 1). It is very important if the insights and metrics being produced are relevant or not. This means self-examining whether your insights are helping or hindering the customer. Data, like everything else within an organisation has a purpose, and if your insights are not serving theirs, then you must have a change in scope and iterate.