This article will discuss the differences between building a data culture vs. building capabilities. Both are necessary, but one without the other may lend you to project failures and costly solutions. Developing a culture first when approaching data will give you better results.
Having competencies on your team to analyze data and bring various data solutions together is where capabilities fit. Indeed, we can all see the benefit of having these skills on your team. When these team members are brought together in an organization that doesn’t already have a data-driven culture, the challenge is that the organization may enter into needless projects that aren’t necessary to support the business challenges.
In addition to a commitment to using for decision-making, it is important that before there are capabilities, we understand what questions the business is asking and how that data will inform business decisions.
For instance, there have been countless projects, like ERP projects, where the team has the capability to bring data together in new ways by eliminating overlaps in data and getting to one view of the customer. When projects like this are approached by giving access to everything, the data isn’t useful and the process becomes overwhelming.
A data-driven culture is one in which the questions the business needs answered are understood and we determine the value of those questions being answered. Culture will inform the importance, relevance, and frequency in which this data needs to be viewed by the business leaders and what decisions will be made with the results.
When leading first with a data-driven culture, you are able to better understand which capabilities and skills are needed on the team vs. generalizing.
The moral of the story is to first lay out the first wave of questions the business needs answered and determine the best ways to get access to that data. You may find that you have the skills needed inside your team to get the job done, or you may need to go outside of your organization for those skills. Either way, the capabilities aren’t what drives the project, it is the questions.
For more on this please view our recorded webinar to begin your journey into a data-driven culture.
You will learn:
Here is the link to the recording
For many, a visual aid assists in creating a mindset of where you are going. We believe strongly in visual aids being essential to a transformation journey regardless of the industry. This is why we have created a data-driven pyramid.
In this article, we will discuss what goes into making decisions from the data you gather and how you might want to approach your data-driven decision-making as a team.