Data is a powerful tool that can help us make better decisions faster. However, a good data strategy is a key to unlocking that power. This post touches on using your data to help you understand your business and make better business decisions.
Better decisions faster.
The need for a data strategy is becoming more critical as the world moves toward a data-driven economy. The right approach can help you make better decisions faster and help your company succeed in an increasingly competitive marketplace.
Data is becoming more critical to the decision-making process. According to IDC, data will account for over 95% of all global business value by 2025. However, many companies are still struggling with how best to use their existing data assets or how they should start collecting new ones. Data must be used for all decision-making—from product development and marketing to supply chain management and customer service—but few organizations have taken the steps necessary to make this possible.
Asking the right questions is essential.
What are the most important things you need to know about our business? How are we going to measure our success as an organization? If everything goes perfectly, what will we look like at the end of a year or two? What is the vision of where the company would like to be in terms of revenue, market share, etc.? How can we find out whether our sales team is performing well?
The right business question helps you focus on what’s important and what is not. It also enables you to make sense of the information that’s available. When you ask a business question that’s clear and precise, you’ll get better answers. This is important because it helps you see the forest through the trees. You can easily get lost in all the details, but if you ask a clear and precise question, it will help you make sense of them. Better questions lead to better answers, such as the most important things that need to happen to achieve our goals.
What is the data telling us?
The data strategy is the first step in understanding and interpreting the data. It helps you identify what to expect from your data, how to best use it, and where to focus your efforts.
It’s important not only because of what it will tell us about our organization and its audience (with whom we’re trying to build trust) but also because of how it will guide our future efforts. For example, if we find out that people are having trouble finding information on our website, they won’t be able to trust us because they think we’re hiding something from them. Likewise, if we discover that our supply chain is falling behind on critical delivery timelines, we must pinpoint root causes and act accordingly.
Self-service exploration versus curated reporting.
There are many ways to present data. The best way is one that is easy to understand, easy to act on, easy to share with others, and easy to find. An important decision to make when building a data strategy is whether you want your users to have the ability to explore the data on their own or if you want them to consume curated information.
Curated reporting means that your analysts work with the data, form hypotheses, and then build reports based on those hypotheses. These reports and dashboards are designed for consumption by others in the company who may not know how to use tools like Tableau or PowerBI.
On the other hand, self-service exploration helps empower people by giving them direct access through dashboards and interactive visualizations that allow them to see patterns emerge organically over time rather than relying on someone else’s interpretation of those patterns. You can think of this as giving people access directly into “the raw” so they can see things happen in real time rather than waiting until someone else has completed an analysis before they can act upon it!
Storytelling with data.
Data can tell a story, but it’s not the same as a story. A data-driven narrative is factual, with evidence to support each claim, and can be distilled into a series of clear insights. However, while this is useful for informing business decisions, it doesn’t capture the emotional impact of an experience — or how it might change how we think about something in the future.
Data-driven narratives show how your data can help people understand the world around them. It’s about using data to tell a story that resonates with people and helps them make better decisions. When done well, data-driven narratives can be both informative and entertaining. They’re a powerful tool that can help communicate ideas more effectively.
Conclusion
Data strategy is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Instead, it’s vital to get the right data strategy for your organization and then use that as a framework for your work. The key is asking the right questions and understanding how to use data to tell better stories that help you improve your business decision-making.
About Citizen39
Citizen39 provides data consulting, including end-to-end data strategy design, planning, and data plan execution. Contact us today to learn more about our approach and how we can help you achieve your strategic goals and objectives with strategic data planning, business intelligence, and other data services.
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