Last Updated on Dec 20, 2019 by James W
Have you felt disappointed with the results coming from the analytics department within your organization? If so, you’re certainly not alone. But this isn’t necessarily due to shortcomings of people on your data team. These are five patterns that often hinder company data analytics strategies.
The Structuring of Your Analytics Department
A lot of executives view the analytics teams as something that will just work itself out. This partially has to do with the underlying specialized nature of data science and analytics. Most people don’t understand it beyond a basic level. And it doesn’t help when your data team exclusively uses complex forms and terminology to explain results.
Harvard Business Review identifies two common structural downfalls common in data analytics strategies. There are teams that work too separately from the organization—thus offering results that are beyond the scope of being tangibly useful. Then, there are teams that are too intertwined with the day-to-day dealings of a company, which leads to a sort of confirmation bias coming from the analytics team. Neither of these provide real value to a business.
Your Lack of Clear Goals
People like the idea of hiring an expert data team, and sort of letting them loose to solve all the organization’s problems. There’s just one problem with this. The analytics players aren’t going to know the issues, or potential solutions, unless you point them toward clear, quantifiable goals.
Without concrete objectives, your data team is just expending energy for no particular reason. It’s also important to continually check-in with the data experts to revise expectations and get a feel for how their work is coinciding with company initiatives.
Your Analytics Tools
Over the past few years, there has been a proliferation of new analytics tools hitting the market. Unsurprisingly, not all these are of the same caliber.
Choosing the wrong dashboard analytics tools for your organization can be a huge setback in several ways. First, it’s going to limit what can be achieved by the people working on your analytics team.
Without the right toolbox, your employees are going to be at a huge disadvantage to those at other companies. But you should also think about this from an investment perspective. Most worthwhile analytics tools and software is going to come at a cost.
This is just the reality of purchasing a product that in order to be created, required a lot of time and monetary capital.
Make sure you do some research to determine which dashboard analytics and BI tools are best suited for your particular needs. It also makes sense to involve your analytics team in this decision. They’ll have insights into what’s actually going to be useful in their work.
Your Company Culture
What’s the underlying decision-making apparatus of your organization? Is it careful, considered action based on data? Or is it spur-of-the-moment actions determined by managers who like to be in charge? It should be perfectly obvious which of these is the superior mode for your company culture.
It’s certainly not easy to adopt new principles for an internal business culture—especially for large, long-established organizations. However, it’s essential that you write data into the code of your company’s DNA. Doing so will put you at a distinct advantage over organizations that refuse to change their ways.
Not Thinking from a Customer Perspective
Sometimes, businesses come up with wonderful, nuanced data solutions that are apparently a great improvement to operations. But things often aren’t as simple as their appearances.
It’s important that you prioritize customer needs when implementing your data analytics strategy. Ultimately, appealing you or clients is what’s going to provide long-term success for your organization. Make sure this concept is cooked into the way your organizationally approach data analytics.
There are a lot of factors that play into developing an effective data analytics strategy. Don’t let a few roadblocks stop you from putting together a strong playbook for your organization.
