Data Overwhelming Decisions

Throughout my career I have been faced with the recurring questions from management and clients alike. “We’ve got all this data but no useful information.” “I can’t make quick decisions because the information isn’t in the format I can use.” “Why do I have to wait for I.T to give me a useful report for days when the data changes so rapidly.” Need I go on?

The linkage between data and information has always been a tenuous one even more so now that there is such an exponential rise in the volume of data both from internal and external sources. Some years ago I attended a board meeting with a major electrical company. During a discussion on performance across various departments the CEO asked the question “Why is it that this product (X) has fallen by X% in only these two geographical areas?” Everyone was speechless, not just because no one had the answer but because they couldn’t understand how the CEO knew something so detailed that they did not. Of course, he hadn’t known this information but just used this to illustrate to his board how little up-to-date information was available and the information that was available was out-of-date so of little use. Readers of my LinkedIn articles will already be aware of my frustration at the gulf in understanding between I.T departments and Retail Operations, neither of which seem to understand the benefit and key drivers of the other. Retail data is always dynamic which means that most reports are out-of-date before they reach the user. In addition, most business intelligence tools are so inflexible so as not to be able to analyse data quickly.

It is estimated that there is upwards of 44 zettabytes, that is 44 billion terabytes, of data in the world. Fortunately not all of this is held by a single company! However, much of the data required by a company comes from outside sources such as weather, competition, suppliers, transport, legal requirements, health and safety as well as being able to respond to global economic and political situations. What is required is a set of business intelligence products that support the full cycle of self-service analytics from data collection through to presenting analytic reports direct to the user and to do so with governance and data management at all stages in development.

One great business intelligence set of such products is Tableau, only formed in 2003 as the result of a computer science project at Stanford that aimed to improve the flow of analysis and make data more accessible to people through visualisation. ?Tableau's foundational technology, VizQL, visually expresses data by translating drag-and-drop actions into data queries through an intuitive interface. This allows users to see and understand their data, understanding being the key word here. My research into business intelligence and analytics tools over the past months has shown that Tableau (in second place), together with Microsoft and Qlik, are the only companies in Gartner’s 2021 Business Intelligence suppliers in the top quadrant of Leaders and Visionaries. Further research has shown that due to Tableau’s continuous development in business intelligence and analytics focused solely on their mission to enable a create a?data-driven culture, has enabled all users to be able to analyse data with intuitive drag-&-drop products without asking I.T for more programming; that is the key message I have drawn from my research.

I would summarise this by stating that putting data at the centre of conversations in a collaborative environment, will immediately facilitate both decision-making as well as innovative thoughts both to improve profits as well as productivity across any industry.