Promote a Data Driven Culture to become a Data Driven Company
Data occupy every level of our company and enable us to better understand our customers, competition and the market as well as our own organisation. Many businesses have already realised this and are increasingly basing their decisions on Business Intelligence analysis and adopting a self-service based model and a data driven culture, resulting in so-called Data Driven Companies.
We can say that an organisation has a data driven culture when its activities are directed by data, rather than intuition or even experience.
This data driven culture is implemented at all levels in a company, because it is actually a philosophy that affects the most important decisions in an organisation and reaches the most basic levels.
When establishing a new BI project, technology is paramount. However, we must not underestimate the importance of other factors if we want to implement this culture in the organisation: the work dynamics and the very nature of the individuals involved are important factors. In other words, it is not enough to adopt the appropriate technology alone, there is also a need for the change to be handled correctly, since the transition to a data driven culture does not come naturally to many companies.
What common characteristics we can find? According to the experts, so-called DDC (Data Driven Companies) have certain features in common, certain guidelines that we must follow to become one of them:
- Data-oriented mentality. Processes must be defined with KPIs in mind and the personnel must be notified so that they can work towards targets.
- Centralised and organised data. For processes to work correctly we need quality data; this implies, among other things, keeping that data permanently updated. This, in turn, requires the information to be organised and easy to access.
- Access to the data. Data governance must be sophisticated, so that self-service is not at odds with security, and it must provide various types of access.
- Integration with the most common tools. The capacity of analysis has to be capable of being integrated into the most common platforms, even traditional systems, in the organisation’s day to day business. This is the only way of ensuring the flexibility and quality of the data and that the personnel are prepared to participate in a data driven culture.
Tableau keeps the people who manage data in mind
The data democratization trend in companies seems be an unstoppable development. This idea is based on a data driven culture, as data are required for all operations performed in organisations and if they are not made available to the appropriate people, the best decisions would not be taken.
With tools such as Tableau, the time when only data analysts were able to work with data is gone; however, this does not mean that we do not need skilled personnel, rather the contrary. This is why it is necessary to:
- Have the right type of staff. Try to hire professionals who know how to make the most of the data, who know the right questions they must ask, who know how to “tell the story” the data portray. It is also important to know when (not often) you must not trust the data.
- Keep user experience in mind when choosing the right technology. As we have already mentioned in other articles in our blog, any user with an average knowledge of Excel, can become a real data hero.
- Raise awareness and train. Based on facts and experiences, we can convince others that data-based decisions are more accurate. Even negative data have resulted, on many occasions, in an opportunity to rescue a project or company. Covering up data or ignoring them only leads to crises. On the other hand, the use of technology among employees is basic; therefore convincing them of the end result and the means, through training, can only be beneficial.
Making people the key players is essential throughout the process; however, if the philosophy is correct and we have innovative technology, such as Tableau, it will be easier to implement a data driven culture successfully.
Intelligence Partner recommends implementing a data driven culture in your company with the assistance of Tableau and, for greater levels of scalability, accessibility and availability we propose implementing it via Google cloud. Try Tableau for free now or contact us for more detailed information.
