How good is your analytics short game?

I turned on the TV this morning to see a replay from Ernie Els at the Masters where he famously six- putted on the first hole. If you have not seen it, the cringe-worthy clip can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YefULut6YrA. 

I remembered how I, (at least when I used to have to time to play many years ago), would spend all of my practice time at the driving range. In reality, no matter how much I practiced, I never really improved my score. Fact is, 50% of the time you touch a ball in golf, it’s with your putter, not your driver, yet that aspect of the game is a rare focus for many. Everyone practices their “long-game”, not the “short-game”. The driver is used less than 15% of the time in an 18-hole round of golf; ironically it’s also the most expensive club in the bag. 

Rewind a few weeks to a meeting I had with a VP of IT at a major retailer. We spoke at length on their data lake strategy that is 12 months underway, and their vision over the next 18-24 months that is going to (hopefully) put “data at the fingertips” of every employee across the globe. The whiteboard was large, and crowded – certainly a big budget capital expense on their hands. Embedded in the project was a consolidation of two data warehouse systems, an ERP migration, then on to a CRM overhaul. By fall/winter 2017, Phase 1 of the data lake will be complete for beta testing. Assuming all goes well, expansion to 50-100 users, review/tweak/test, and then onboard department by department, country by country. In 2+ years, assuming all goes as planned, MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! If there is an “analytics long game” this is it, and just like that beautiful TaylorMade driver sitting in your golf bag in the garage collecting winter dust, it’s not cheap! 

After I saw the putt disaster replay, I started reading through several speaker submissions for our 2017 Inspire conference in the spring. One entrant was from a line of business analyst who, armed with a single desktop license of Alteryx and a curious mind, unlocked a $60,000,000.00 cost savings to their company. This analytics discovery had no mention of their “data-lake” strategy, Hadoop ambitions, or their ongoing SAP migration. In fact, it took less than a week. Point here is that it’s at the front lines where the quick wins can be found – and quick wins many times have BIG payoffs.

Enabling your line of business with a platform that allows them to analyze their own data on their own timeline drives immediate results. It also creates a culture that embraces problem solvers.  IT has an opportunity to be the hero to their customer by embracing self-service solutions for data prep and analytics. The long term data strategy is certainly important, but self-service may the “analytics short game” your organization may be missing to improve your game. 

Remember, the best golfers in the world aren't the ones that hit the ball the farthest. If you want to really improve your company's analytics score, work on your short-game!