Don't Let Your Data Strategy Crash from a Sugar High

It's unfortunately easy to spend a lot of money, and create very little value

Back in December of 2018, I had the privilege to speak at the MinneFRAMA (Finance, Retail, and Marketing Analytics) conference in St. Paul, MN in early December. The venue was spectacular - as a bunch of data nerds were able to take over the Science Museum of Minnesota. Big thanks to the MinneAnalytics team for continuing to bring our community together in the Twin Cities.

The premise of the talk was - what happens if you pay attention to behaviors in the data and analytics space?

Would it change your focus individually, the focus of your team, or the focus of your organization?Would you see the behaviors that you expect to see, or would some behaviors make you cock your head a bit like a dog trying to understand what you are saying?

I personally have to pay attention to my own behavior everyday as a Type 1 diabetic. If I don't, in the near term I feel like garbage and in the long term, I may not be here for my wife & daughter as long as I want to be!! Needless to say, watching, monitoring, and understanding the effects of behavior is very important to me.

So how does this tie to data strategy you ask?

What if you think of data and analytical models as raw materials, sitting on a shelf in the back wall of a manufacturing warehouse?

• Would you rethink the "touch a source take a source" strategy?

• Would you sharpen your focus on retiring legacy data assets (think unused raw materials piling up on the shelves)?

What if you think of BI solutions, dashboards, monthly decks, etc as products sitting on the shelf at a retailer that someone has to buy (hopefully over and over again)?!

• Would you get rid of products that are not "purchased"/used?

• Would you advertise some solutions that for some reason are not used, which are phenomenal?

• Would you wonder why you have 20 (or pick your own number) of the same product?

As I reflected on the talk afterwards, I couldn't help but think:

"Here I am saying - all this sexy & cool stuff that all of the other talks are covering today is worth nothing if nobody uses it - this must be a bit of a downer!"

I wondered if maybe I was being a bit too harsh. However, the more I thought about it, the more I personally believe it is a strong point to make in todays world. I think as an industry, we are all a little punch drunk on the "sugar high" of data, and it is easy to crash from that high. Why else would there be statistic after statistic, article after article, referencing the high failure rate of BI, data, and analytics efforts within organizations that do not meet their advertised promises.

If you build the coolest machine learning models, or some snazzy visuals in (pick your tool of choice), they truly are worth nothing if no one is actually using them to run their business and build the future.

I closed out the talk covering a number of metrics that I have used to watch how people are behaving within an organization - there is a sampling in the image above. I personally have used the data points to do "BI on ourselves" to shape, guide, and sharpen the focus of the data, BI, and analytics strategy of the organization.

To that end I will ask all of you, just as I did the audience, what if you had a dashboard similar to the one in the image at the top of this article to guide you, your team, or your organization? Would it change how you work? I think it would, as it has for me.

Here is the link to my deck for those interested in seeing more of the content, and keep me posted if you have any questions/feedback, or want to collaborate within the comments section.