How do we enable data?
I've been thinking a lot about data enablement. After all companies are spending a lot of money on data and analytics (IDC estimates $215.7 Billion in 2021). But how do we know that our companies are leveraging real value from that investment? That is where enablement comes in. After all, enablement is the "action of giving someone the means to do something." So how do we help our companies do something with that investment? I think there are three areas to consider: engagement, training and visibility.
Engagement means "the continual development of a relationship", and this is often the last thing that companies think about when they build data strategies. But the fact remains that we want people to leverage our data, so we need to build the trust of the people who should be using it. In busy and virtual times it requires assigned engagement leads intentionally promoting and pursuing the relationships, so that we don't build our data tables in a vacuum.
Training may be more obvious, but too often we train to the wrong things. We create technical videos or train to tools - but to effectively increase the use of data we need to teach three simple things. First, what data are available? Don't just push people to a complex data dictionary, make it obvious, Second, how do we access the data? Not everyone knows SQL or python nor are they comfortable creating complex queries. Third, what story do the data tell us? Accenture estimates that only 25% of employees are comfortable in using data in their jobs - so to enable data we need to teach data literacy.
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Finally, we need visibility to see who is actually using data or data-driven analytics. Too often I have found people investing many months and dollars in building tables or dashboards that are seldom used. Accountability through seeing use helps us fine tune our strategy.
The world is filled with data - and we should be excited about the investments so many companies are making. But we need a strategy of enablement - and that is my focus at McDonald's. I'd love to hear how you are enabling your data.
Jeff Nieman While most organizations emphasize on technology for data enablement but its actually the will & skill across hierarchy that need to be addressed to adopt & adapt the new change of data driven culture. Data can only provide insights but its human cognitive skills that turns the data insights into powerful actionable intelligence!
Hi Jeff, we spent a greater part of last year researching this across organizations and found that there is a missing part in the last mile data stack. This is data delivery. Happy to share more and how this advances data engagement and effectiveness.
We enable people, by giving them the information they wanted to make the healthy decision. The difficulty for me as a techy has been keeping in touch with - being in relationship with - my clients, the people who use the data products I build. So I don't forget how to speak their language, and show them information in the form they can digest easily.