Creating a Data-Driven Culture
A data-driven culture embraces the use of data in all aspects of business decision making. Culture isn’t something that can be created overnight regardless of the organisation.
A culture where data is the leading force behind decision making can set your company apart from the competition. Internally, it also brings objectivity, transparency, and innovation to your brands.
Below are some of the key steps that your organisation should take for a data-driven culture to take shape.
Improve the Dataset
While it may seem obvious, the data itself has the biggest impact on how data-driven the culture is within an organisation. Both the quality and relevance of data will determine whether data is currently embraced within the company.
Steps can be taken to ensure your data is trusted, accurate and secure. Data strategies must be developed to appropriately align with your overarching business goals and objectives. Similarly, the tools used to output your analytics need to aid these strategies.
Data governance measures must also be taken to protect and maintain the quality of your organisation’s data assets. With all end users playing a role in mitigating the potential risk and improving the security surrounding the data, this helps establish awareness within the organisation.
Single Customer View
A Single Customer View is an aggregated, consistent and holistic representation of the data held by an organisation about its customers that can be viewed in one place. With a single source of the truth departments across all levels of an organisation can have access to a central and controlled data source.
Without a Single Customer View, departments can often be receiving the supposed same data from different sources only to discover the information is different.
Not only will it ensure the data used in all departments is accurate, it’ll also help improve the employee experience. Often data spread out across multiple silos. This makes it difficult for employees to trawl through this information to find what they’re looking for.
With a holistic representation of the organisations data in place, analysts and decision makers will spend less time looking for the right data.
Data Literacy
With data accessibility no longer being an issue, the next step involves ensuring staff understand the data they’re using.
Research indicates that 74% of employees report feeling overwhelmed or unhappy when working with data. Regular compulsory training on specific data literacy courses will ensure staff at all levels of the organisation will be comfortable working with statistics and data visualisation.
Beyond data literacy itself, data storytelling is an important data science skill that has benefits for every department. The process of translating data analyses into layman’s terms to influence business decisions and actions.
When a common language is established within an organisation regarding data vocabulary, it becomes easier for departments to communicate with each other. Consistency across the board ensures more accurate data communication across the entire organisation.
Creating the culture at the top
The process of changing culture in an organisation is a massive undertaking. Without top-level management on board with these changes, any plans for a data-driven culture could fall apart.
Buy-in from the very top is far more likely to be effective than starting at the bottom and working its way up the organisation.
Without management involved in the process of creating a data-driven culture, it could lead to constant pushback from different departments.
In conclusion, a data-driven culture thrives when upper management is engaged, data education is readily available, and a solution is in place to ensure the data is accessible and accurate.
Do you wish to find out more about the services we offer to improve your data strategy? Be sure to contact us today on +353 1 8041298!
