Data analytics provides a wealth of opportunity for organizations today. A proper data analytics strategy allows organizations to uncover problems, better understand their customers, make decisions on actionable insights and get a leg up on their competitors. Yet, most companies aren’t experiencing these benefits when it comes to their own analytics strategy.
This can stem from a variety of reasons, but these four hold-ups are essential to correct.
Not Baked into Company Culture
Even before specific strategies come into play, it’s paramount to cultivate a data-oriented company culture. Getting employees to buy into data isn’t achieved through delegating reporting structure and tasks, though.
All levels of personnel need to understand that data should inform their day-to-day decisions and not just something they interact with in-depth at scheduled intervals. Getting different departments into the habit of using data to support their decisions will become cyclical. When all levels of the company are regularly looking to data to inform their work, every department can function more autonomously and efficiently. In today’s fast-paced world, the ‘wait-and-see’ game just doesn’t work anymore.
Unclear Understanding of Business Problems
A company that believes in using data to inform their decisions won’t get far if they don’t understand the business problem they’re trying to solve. Why is data being collected? What are the ultimate business goals of the data analytics strategy? How is the data being collecting serving the overall strategy? Organizations without an intimate understanding of organizational challenges are driving blind. When the most important questions are asked, the types of data that will need to be leveraged become clearer.
Lack of Collaboration and Accessibility
As valuable as data can be in the business world when it comes to beating the competition, it can hold you back if you’re not careful. Too many organizations let data build up until it’s no longer relevant. This is often a shared symptom of organizations that have yet to become data-driven. On the other hand, though, organizations have become so zealous with their data collection efforts that they’ve drowned in their own data lakes, sitting on massive loads of information that only few have access to and not in an agile environment.
All levels of the organization need to have access to data to make sure all business decisions are being made on facts, not assumptions. Limiting access and insight to only a few dedicated roles keeps all the valuable data away from everyday decision-making and drains internal technical bandwidth when the data is needed (which is always).
Insufficient Bandwidth
Building out a data analytics team offers the potential for businesses to glean sharper insights and make progress on business goals, however many organizations aren’t realizing the full potential of their data because analysts are stuck producing report after report. That’s why user-friendly analytics reporting software that leverages artificial intelligence and natural language processing is such a boon to gaining value from data. When employees across a company can simply search the database for questions instead of putting another report request in, the data team can focus on more high-level tasks for long-term growth.
Data can help a business achieve long-term success, but it can also be a huge waste of time without the proper planning and focus. Organizations that build a company culture that views data as an asset instead of a nightmare and employs the right people to fuse data strategy with overall business goals will be positioned to achieve future success in an ever-moving digital world.
