What I've Learned About Data in 2019

It's hard to believe that it's been over a year since my last LinkedIn article. I went from posting every week during my early IBM days, to every so often with professional updates, then had a bit of a writer-identity-crisis and thought I would publish etiquette articles (that's still happening over on my blog, don't worry), and now here we are a year later.

When reflecting on what's happened since I last wrote, I realized that this has been the year of data. And I don't just mean in the cliché way of "everyone and every company needs to use data." I mean this has been the year I actually understand what critically looking at data can do for you and your business.

Data in personal decisions.

First, let's look at one of my bigger personal decisions of the year. I decided to leave IBM and take an opportunity at Looker. There were so many "data points" and factors, including emotions and relationships, that went into making that decision. From considering the value of my network within IBM, to the growth of Looker, to the compensation and benefits, there were many hours spent on analysis.

What I quickly realized was that I needed to rely on data I understood and trusted. I leveraged tools like The Salary Project and professional connections to get information on the factors that were most important to me, and made what has turned out to be a great decision. Cutting out the noise and focusing on the useful information that was relevant to me was the key.

Data in business decisions.

When working in the financial crimes space (selling software that would help banks stop the crime, not perpetrating it...I always feel the need to clarify that), data was everything. What information did we have on an individual - their habits, their location, their history - to determine if they were committing fraud. Because of the specialized nature, we could very quickly determine all of the relevant data needed and it was easy to speak the same language.

Now working with Looker, my eyes have been opened to the value of data across all departments of a company. No longer am I focused on one use case, but rather I'm helping companies to understand what has happened, what is happening, and what action should be taken based on information coming from a variety of sources.

And the most important thing is that the data can be understood and trusted, just like in my personal use.

What does it mean to understand and trust data?

Quick diversion for me to justify the use of clichés, like "understanding and trusting data" (if we're not careful over here I may just start talking about synergies or something). My grandmother is the queen of clichés. I don't care what the situation is, she has one for you.

Something doesn't work out romantically? There are other fish in the sea.

You're exhausted? What do you expect when you're burning the candle at both ends?

And this can go on for...your whole life. So if clichés are good enough for grandma and are "clichés for a reason," we're going to go with it.

Let's take "understanding the data" first.

Have you ever created your own version of a report or put information from one system into Excel to work on yourself because the description of the data didn't make sense for your role? Or what about working across departments and finding out that coworkers had a different understanding of what metrics meant than you?

This sort of misalignment around understanding the information you use to do your job can be a headache at best and a barrier at worst. But what if there was a way to look at data in terms you understood and that made sense for your business? What if your data team could translate all of the information coming in and disseminate it to the organization in a way that encouraged collaboration and empowerment to explore the data by individuals? Well, I think grandma would say that would be like Christmas morning every day.

And how about "trusting the data"?

In my personal example it was hard to find data I could trust, exactly. I was pulling from personal experience and from the advice of others and had to weigh it all out. Business shouldn't need to be like that! We have access to troves of information about how our customers are interacting with us, and what their needs are, and how our business has been performing, and what products are selling well, and the list goes on.

However, when you're in a meeting and one team has one set of results and another team has different results for the same metric, trust goes out the window. So not only is it important to understand the data you're using, it's arguably more important to trust that it's right.

The good news is that one of grandma's clichés does not hold true here - "you can't have it all." Actually, you can. With strategy and intentional use of modern tools you can have data you understand and trust. You can know what decisions make sense for your business, based on fact. And you can effectively leverage the valuable data your teams collect.

More details about how companies are achieving understanding and trust of their data with Looker can be found here.