What Is Your Analytics Destination?
Do You Know Where You’re Headed?
Do you wish you had better analytics?
Do you have a vision for what you want your analytics function to look like?
Do you know how to get there?
Let’s take a look at defining a data analytics vision.
What Does Data Analytics Mean To You?
Analytics and data science can have many interpretations. It can be as simple as improving your reporting process or as complicated as advanced AI.
What does your company need?
Transforming your analytics capabilities doesn’t happen overnight. As with any strategic undertaking it will go more smoothly if you have a direction and a plan for how to get there. Identifying your business needs and where analytics might help is the first step.
What are your biggest and most expensive problems and what do you think of when you imagine those problems solved?
Is it interactive dashboards and automated reporting, better systems, more detailed insights, process automation, predictive tools for forecasting/planning, AI or something else?
There isn’t one answer. It depends on what your company needs, the resources you can dedicate, and on your current state of readiness.
Where Are You Starting From?
To achieve your vision you’ll need take stock of your current state and set realistic goals.
How far is your analytics vision from your Current reality?
Consider the current capacity and capabilities of your team, your data infrastructure, and your analytics tools. Then think about where you want them to be and how you’ll get there.
How easy is it to get quality data from your systems? Can your current data infrastructure support the analytics function you envision?
How skilled is your current team in extracting and analyzing this data? What other advanced analytics capabilities do they have?
Do you have the necessary analytics tools to perform the analysis you need?
Once you’ve assessed the gap you’ll need a plan to get from where you are now to where you want to be.
Bridging The Gap
Once you’ve defined your vision and assessed your current state you need a plan to achieve your vision.
Try breaking your vision down
Create a 5 year strategic plan and determine where you want to be at year 1, year 2, and eventually year 5. Be realistic and conservative about what you can achieve by these milestones.
If your end goal is to take advantage of advanced AI, but your team currently struggles with reporting or it’s difficult to get quality data from your systems, then it’s going to take a while to build up to that goal. You’ll need to develop your people, processes, and data infrastructure.
Identify and Prioritize your projects
Think about where you’ll get the most value. Consider which projects are most critical and which are easier to achieve. Find the balance that provides the greatest impact vs the effort and resources required.
Think simple instead of complicated
Often simple or basic analytics solutions like better data visualization can provide a lot of value, especially where you currently have little to no information about a particular process or problem.
Starting slow and simple while solving big problems will help achieve buy in from the analytically skeptical while you build the data and analytics foundation needed to tackle more complex projects and deploy more complex analytics solutions.
Do you need guidance in developing or implementing your analytics vision?
CHECK OUT OUR SERVICE PACKAGES AND FIND OUT HOW ARIEL ANALYTICS CAN HELP.
About the photos: Minnewaska State Park Preserve, New York
Thoughts: Just a couple of hours north of New York City you’ll find some great hiking, including Gertrude’s Nose and the Ice Caves.
Have a data or analytics question that you’d like to see answered here? Email your questions to stacey@arielanalytics.com.
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Stacey Schwarcz is the Founder and CEO of Ariel Analytics. She specializes in analytics for business operations, helping these functions improve their analytics capabilities. She is also the creator of The Data Wilderness ® Blog, which provides practical introductory analytics content for business professionals who are not analytics experts and want to learn more. LinkedIn