Why you are frustrated with your data strategy… and its not because of the software!

The typical situation

You recognise the need to invest in your data strategy and over the last years have seen the rise of terms such as big data, democratic B.I. and data visualisation.

Your business has gone through discussions on what needs to be done and yet despite engaging your resources and investing heavily you still find that even the most basic meetings remain focused on opinion not fact. Nobody is using anything that you have created in your data strategy but prefer either legacy insight of independent silos of modelling (Normally from excel).

If any of this sounds true then don’t despair many of your competition will be facing exactly the same challenges and experiencing the exact same frustrations. However whereas often the discussion will descend into what data warehouse to use, or what reports are needed I argue that the primary reason for these frustrations is not to do with technology it is to do with understanding where your teams skills sit across three boxes…

The three boxes

The challenge

Often business will build teams to unlock the value of data with a lead who only really understands one of the tree boxes:

·      The head of I.T. who may never have worked in a store but loves box1

·      The head of finance who might never have been in a negotiation with a supplier but loves statistics box2

·      The head of operations who can see the business value in changing behaviours box3 but struggle to open an email

No one of these is at fault the reality is you need to build teams with the right balance in all three, lead by someone who has an awareness of the value in all three boxes.

Depending on where you are in your journey you may need 70% box 1, 20% box 2 and 10% box three, as the business matures you move more to box 3 so as to avoid over complexity, the reflection on what resource is needed in each box is the key.

So what, now what?

I have worked in this field of analytics for the last 14 years and in retail for the last 30 years. The humanistic use of data has been pivotal in helping me develop my professional career.

If the challenges described here resonate, and you have a passion to unlock behavioural change through data please do reach out to me.

https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/chrisfisher24/