Misinterpretation of Data

Without proper understanding, department heads might misinterpret the data, leading to incorrect strategic decisions. This could negatively impact operations, finances, and overall business performance

What is misinterpretation of data and how do you overcome this challenge?

Let’s dive in.

The first challenge to overcome is to understand that data interpretation is not your IT department's speciality.

(For the purpose of simplicity, I will group all data-related disciplines?into IT including infrastructure, database administration, developer, data scientist, etc.)

Hosting and collecting data are well within their realm.?In my experience working with companies to interpret data, I've seen many loops of failure to use data in a meaningful way.?

Let's start the cycle.

"Dear IT, please give us a report on monthly sales at the end of each month."?

?

The instruction is clear and simple, but it does not provide business context and without business context, it has minimal business value.?In most companies, this report will fail to take into account normal sales behaviour.

For example:?Sales will invoice on the 1st of the month and ask finance to backdate the invoices. Clients will make changes to the order after it has been invoiced.

We can argue and say that IT people generating the report could clearly see the above-mentioned scenarios and adjust the report according to reflect it in the report but these scenarios, although it is visible in the data, are not part of their reality. They live in a reality where data comes in and data goes out and manages the flow, not the business process.

The other favourite option is to resend the report daily or for some people, it is even placed on a dashboard, in both cases it causes a sales discussion of "But sir, the report is not correct because...and ... "??

If IT does?an?investigation to discover and include business context, it could be a 12-month project as they do not know or understand the accuracy nor the common factors that would influence the data. They go off to pace, far away (disconnected) frustrating business and resulting in the oh-so-common business statement "Just do it quickly and don't make a big thing out of it".?

And here we have?a cycle of frustration, and we end up with thousands of business users that read how advanced data analytics have become and the value it brings, but yet in their own realities, it is merely another mail in their inboxes. This email then moves to the junk folder by the third month and IT keeps generating reports and dashboards as fast as they can to avoid the business value discussion of effort spent.?

At Castigroup?we are revenue-focused technology enablers?with a vision to help build profitable business entities that serve humanity through innovation.

To achieve our goals we use?Custom Software Development ,?IT Infrastructure ?and?Marketing .