Get hooked on data

You don’t need to be a big fish to make the most of your data. You just have to start somewhere.

If you’ve read a few of my articles, you’ll know I’m passionate about the importance of data and analytics to drive good business decisions both strategic and operational.  Not everyone is doing this, which means there are lots of exciting opportunities for many businesses to unlock. 

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER

The organisations that have mastered data analysis have reaped the benefits. Just look at the big players like Netflix and Amazon. Their ability to meet the viewing and buying needs of their many audiences has propelled them into household names. But you don’t need to be a big fish to make the most of your data. You just have to start somewhere.

THE 80/20 RULE

This rule is relevant for data, analytics and insights. You don’t need to have all the data and the data doesn’t need to be perfectly clean, but it’s imperative you use what you have to take a step in the right direction.

From my experience the following are practical steps to start enhancing your data, analytics and insights capability easily.

Practical steps you can use

Seek out the people in your organisation who are interested in data and analytics.

Normally you will find them in finance or IT.

Give these individuals or teams a specific question to answer each week.

For example – tell me more about the customers that are leaving us:

• Profile
• Demographics
• How long have they been a customer
• Claims history
• Payment/credit history
• Customer service complaints/customer experience scores 

Get them to present this to the relevant Executive.

Ask them to detail what they’ve learnt and what would they do differently.

Now it’s time to think about your data strategy

As you start to build momentum, write a list of all the strategic and operational questions you want to answer.  This should create a pipeline of questions that can be investigated leading to recommendations to the Executives on how these insights should change strategy and operations. 

The changes should then be tracked and monitored through your regular key metrics reporting to understand how these shifts have positively impacted business results.

NEED A DATA CHAMPION TO KICK THINGS OFF?

From finding the data champions within your business, to identifying the key data outputs best suited to help your business grow into a smarter, stronger operator, reach out to me. My expert experience, passion for data analytics and team of data and marketing professionals may be just the kick-start your company needs to grow with data.

DATA & ANALYTICS, BIG DATA