Becoming a Data Driven Organization

Most leaders understand that the ability to collect and use data can make a significant difference in the success of an organization. That is why so many businesses and other organizations spend so much money collecting, storing and analyzing data.

Simply collecting and storing data does not make an organization data-driven. If you want to be data-driven, the use of data can’t be exclusive to the data team. Even if the team is delivering insights and analysis to management and they use it to make decisions, we would not consider this a data-driven organization. 

For an organization to be data driven, data must be used at all levels. Most organizations have people from top to bottom making important decisions every day. If everyone is still making decisions based on experience, a hunch or a gut feeling, your organization is not data-driven. Your management might be, but think of all of the decision-making that is not based on hard data.

Fortunately, any organization can take steps to become data-driven. In this post, we are going to show you how to become a data-driven organization.

Evaluate Your Goals

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to becoming data-driven. If you are going to get the most from being data-driven, you need to evaluate your operation and determine the types of goals you are trying to achieve. For instance, if you’re an ecommerce site, you will want data on your customers so you can recommend other products and boost sales. You might also have the goal to attract and retain new customers. Without goals, you are still just looking at a bunch of values in a dashboard or chart. You need to know where you want the data to take your organization. Having clear goals will help inform the decisions you make through the rest of the process of transforming into a data-driven organization.

Know Your Data

Every organization has data. Maybe it is an inventory system, invoicing or data from your website. Collecting data is good, but you need to know what you have before you can take the necessary steps to becoming a data-driven organization. Perform a complete assessment of the data your organization has access to. This includes internal data and any data that might come from third-party sources. You should also consider the potential to obtain more data. Are there ways you could collect more internal data? Are there any other sources of third-party data that could help fill in the gaps?

Find the Right Data Tools

Data won’t do much without the right tools to make it work for your organization. To be a data-driven organization, you will need tools to collect, organize and analyze data. Finding the right tools will depend on the organization. When looking for the right data tools, you will need to consider factors like pricing, user interface, analytics capabilities, integrations and the platform’s ability to work with the different systems you use.

Promote the Change

Organizations often come up short when they attempt to become more data-driven because they have trouble getting people to buy in. If this transformation is going to be successful, you need to get everyone on board. Have company leaders promote the use of new data tools and explain how they can benefit everyone. You might also need to consider a little training for using these new systems. Make sure everyone knows how to use the new data tools and teach them about the different ways you want them to use data to make decisions.

Becoming more data-driven is not something that happens overnight. It takes time and it is a continual process. With augmented analytics from Crux Intelligence, organizations of all sizes can get the intelligence they need to be more data-driven at all levels. Our AI-powered analytics platform can deliver powerful insights from multiple data sources and our system is designed to put the power of data in the hands of the user. Request a demo to see how Crux Intelligence can help your organization become more data-driven.