Why your organisation sucks at using data

If there is one thing clear about the world of data and analytics, it’s that there’s a lot happening. There is an ever-expanding number of products focused on helping organisations to become more “empowered” and “data-driven”. To get a better understanding of the sheer size and complexity of the space, I like to look at Matt Turck’s annual data and AI landscape review (it’s well worth a look).

The amount of products and investment in this area is exciting, but there have been numerous times in my career where I’ve looked at a product and asked myself:

“How can this product really help an organisation use its data to its full potential?”

Because I am an analyst at heart, I decided to undertake an exercise to review some of the shiniest data and analytics products out there to, at best, understand the different products on the market and how they can transform an organisation to become data-driven, or at worst, create a word cloud.

So, here’s my word cloud:

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Key outcome: I’ve now learnt that marketers really like adding the word ‘driven’ after words. I will now pass this onto our marketing team — this is what you call an “actionable insight”.

At this stage, you could argue that I’m being a bit facetious, but here are three compelling facts:

1. The analytic platforms software market grew by 4.4% to $25.5 billion in 2020.¹
2. 74% of employees report feeling overwhelmed or unhappy when working with data.²
3. Overwhelmed employees will avoid using data, with 36% stating that they will find an alternative method to complete the task without using data.²

To recap because it bears repeating:

We are spending approximately $25.5 billion on analytics software, where 74% of employees feel overwhelmed, while 36% will go out of their way to avoid using it.

That’s insane.

But why? The apparent billion dollar question — with all the investment in this area, why do we still suck at using data?

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Why your organisation sucks at using data

There have been several factors discussed by leading publications and consultancies as to what is required to make an organisation data-driven, some key ones include:

1. Executive sponsorship and buy-in is a key driver to an organisation becoming data-driven.³
2. The overall data literacy of users in an organisation is a barrier to creating a data-driven organisation.²
3. Your organisation needs a single source of truth, so as to remove scenarios where inconsistent numbers are used to inform strategic decisions.⁴

I have a slightly different take. I believe that somehow, despite the large amount of investment in this space, the tools that have been developed, implemented, and currently resides in your organization, are not fit for purpose.

Technology has always been a means to bring change, and that if the software was well developed, intuitive and helpful, that people would always find a way to use it. Just look at how people have taken to Google and have learned how to search for answers to their questions, and despite all of that the most common response we get working in this space from people is, “I don’t know what question to ask”.

I don’t say any of this lightly: saying that technology in this space is not fit for purpose, has been a result of years working with clients, supporting them, to use data on a day-to-day basis. We’ve had several assumptions get broken over the years, chief among them: that having a well-developed data and analytics platform enables a data-driven culture.

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We can do better. A lot better.

Our world is complex, we have a lot of different people, with a wide range of skills from different backgrounds. No matter your choice of weapon, whether it be Excel, Python or SQL, our fight is against the increasingly entangled, yet nuanced, web that is data. We are falling behind, while data is increasing in momentum every day, we are slowly losing track of all the hard work we did before.

Even if we get a win, those insights that are truly a diamond in the rough, chances are they are not being actioned on fast enough and it’s started to lose its value.

Here at dablr, we want to change things. We believe that the problem isn’t the people, but rather the lack of process around data and the lack of tools that enables a process-driven approach. That’s a pretty ambiguous statement but see if these scenarios sound familiar.

For the analysts:

• Ever had a request come through from someone more senior, that took up to a week of your time, only to never hear from that person again?
• Ever get involved in a project, where you identified some compelling insights that could truly help the business, only to realise that nobody thought about how it would get communicated, let alone actioned or implemented?

For the managers:

• Ever find out the numbers you are using to inform strategic decisions are missing key data points that could very well change the outcome of your business?
• Ever got an awesome idea, a data project that could transform the business, only to find out several months down the line that someone else had that idea a year ago in a different department?

As an aside, I now really want to create the ‘Never Have I Ever’ edition for data professionals. Stay tuned.

We all work differently, with different tools, but we believe that there is a way we can work better together and really take control of our data. Over the next couple of months, we are going to outline just how we aim to achieve that.

If any of this resonates with you, or if it doesn’t, I’d be keen to hear from you. We want to make a product that really targets the core issues of using data, and we can’t do that without you.

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References

[1] A. Woodward et al., Market Share: Data and Analytics Software, Worldwide, 2020 (2021), Gartner Research

[2] Data Literacy Project, The Human Impact of Data Literacy (2020), Accenture and Qlik

[3] B. Dykes, 10 Reasons Why Your Organization Still Isn’t Data-Driven (2021), Forbes

[4] C. Anderson, M. Li, Five building blocks of a data-driven culture (2017), TechCrunch