Great Data Alone Won’t Make You Data-Driven – This Will

“Data leaders need to answer the question of what they need to deliver better customer experience, service, or to enter new markets,” said Bean. “Then you ask what data you need to answer those questions, and who needs access to that data. If you do that, you’ve established the most important thing, which is trust and credibility with the business.”

A case in point is the fast-growing 5-year-old Danish car subscription company Dribe, whose primary investor hails from the traditional auto industry. Executives who led companies in the pre-internet era “aren’t inclined to believe data, so you’ve got to do two things: show very specific use cases, and serve the data on a silver platter so it is extremely easy to understand,” said Erik Asbjørn Arvid, Dribe’s chief technology officer.

Bean suggested the following for senior leaders looking to establish a data culture:

• Organisations should hire data executives with a background in organisational change, not just data technology and analytics. 
• Companies should work with change management experts to understand barriers to establishing data cultures, and how to remove them. 
• Business executives need to promote data-driven decision-making and hire and promote those who practice it. 
• These leaders should also celebrate data successes and highlight them at all levels of the organisation.

To get buy-in from business leaders, it’s critical for data executives to articulate the business case for an organisational transformation built around data, including specific examples of business results.

“It’s not enough to say you’ve got the highest IQ or the best algorithm,” Bean said. “You’ve got to make your case demonstrating business value.”

Advanced education programs are emerging to bridge the divide. MIT, Carnegie Mellon, and the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, for example, have executive programs that meld the studies of data, analytics, and business.

At too many companies, the only people who manage data are the analysts who specialise in organising and assessing it. This narrow approach is a key impediment to building a data culture. After all, how can you establish an organisational norm when only a select few are invited into the club?

To democratise data across all stakeholders, companies need to start by investing in training and data literacy. Today, only 39% of companies reported making data training available to all employees, even though 80% of employees said they’re more likely to remain with a company if they offer data training.

The ability to access and understand data will yield faster and better-informed decisions, and higher-performing, empowered, more agile teams. The good news is technology has made it possible to not only connect previously disconnected data sources, but also make it shareable, manageable, and interpretable to a much broader pool of stakeholders.

These tools, Bean noted, must filter the data so it’s relevant to each person’s role, and be presented in a visual way (such as easy-to-read dashboards) so they are comfortable with it. These visualisations must align with the organisation’s key business objectives.

At Dribe, nearly every employee is trained and has access to continuously-updated Tableau dashboards. For example, business leaders have insight and forecasting into sales, profit, and inventory, while portfolio managers rely on algorithms to predict members’ future car needs.

“Training is where you sow the cultural seed,” said Arvid.