How to become data driven.

I have had the pleasure of working with many organisations over many years and every one of them has a desire to become more data driven. In this article I will share my opinion of what data driven is and how to be successful in developing a data driven culture.

So what does data driven even mean?

Being data driven is a cultural shift in how an entire organisation uses data to make better business decisions based on data that leads to better outcomes. Being data driven is not an IT project. Being data driven is about engaging everyone in the business in data from the top down. Being data driven means being resourceful with data, both internal and external to deliver new insights that provides new perspectives that leads to actionable insights. Being data driven means celebrating outcomes the are the result of innovative use of data.

Being data driven is a strategy that needs executive support and investment in people and technology to be achieved. As in all strategic initiatives there needs to be a plan, and a desire to execute the plan to achieve the desired goals. The plan needs to include a number of key pillars that ensures success while maintaining data security but also developing a self-service culture for data.

For most organisations this includes a dramatic shift in the way data is used and a change in approach to data governance. To be data driven you need to move from a "lock it down" data security approach to a carefully architected secure trust model. Data needs to become easy to find and easy to use. Tools need to be implemented to help people collaborate and understand data easily to make it more approachable. And most importantly people need to be able to trust the data they have access to.

Many platforms these days have these tools built in so they can support a well governed self-service approach and these tools are generally categorised as Data Catalogues. Implementing a data catalogue is a critical part of becoming data driven as it becomes the central repository of all information related to data. This includes the data dictionary, business information on the data, ability to access the data stewards for data, see where and who is utilising the data and how often the data is being used. All of this information helps people better understand what data exists, how to get access, what is it for, and whether it is fit for purpose for their analysis.

Once we have a place to go to understand where and what is available for consumption, how do we "tool up" to be able to make use of the data?

This is a contentious area as different stakeholders have different ideas on what tools they prefer. For technical people, they will lean more towards tools that utilise their skill set which may mean they are harder for business users to drive. I have often heard about how the "stack" becomes a more important factor in choosing the right tools. I sometimes feel if we only focus on the stack we are forgetting about the outcomes we are driving and we isolate a large part of the business because the tools are too technical in nature. My opinion is that we need to provision the right tool for the right skillset. This means technical and non-technical people need to work together to "meet in the middle" to ensure we don't lose focus on our desire to become data driven across the organisation.

Once the tools for engaging in the data have been implemented there needs to be an ongoing focus on ensuring the organisation is continuing to be innovative with data and that achievements are celebrated and a community of excellence around data is created. There will always be new data to source, investigate and integrate into the data infrastructure that adds more value to the business. Being able to easily find, govern and store new data needs to be part of the data strategy. We need to encourage people to share their data, include it in the data catalogue and have it properly managed and governed. We need to discourage having "our version" of the data in disconnected unmanaged spreadsheets.

This is a very high-level article on becoming data driven. There are far more steps in developing people and implementing infrastructure to support an organisation to become truly data driven and enjoy the benefits this delivers. Over the coming weeks I intend to post more articles that cover specific components to help organisations become more data driven.