First, let me be very clear. If you have an analyst and/or Power BI - top work! Your thinking is way ahead of the majority we speak to in this space.
But – and it’s a big but – when it comes to getting value and impact from Built Environment data, there’s a lot to consider.
Often, your efforts can have the opposite effect to what you’d assumed. The lack of impact you’re seeing leaves you thinking that Data projects are pointless – but I’m here to tell you, that definitely isn’t the case.
Let’s think about why you might be where you are right now.
The clue to what analysts are great at is in their title. They are incredible at analysing. But that’s only a small piece of the data-impact puzzle.
75% of the data journey awaits well before you can even think about analysing, and in smaller businesses, that 75% is the job of… you’ve guessed it, the poor old analyst.
In asking them to step this far outside of their core skillset, you’re going to lose almost all the potential that’s sitting in your systems and spreadsheets.
Let’s go over what it takes to build an engaging and impactful data journey.
1) Impact Workshops
Sessions designed to uncover strategic priorities and build a plan to support those strategies and accelerate your business towards its strategic goals.
- Who – Data Impact / Value Specialist
(someone that gets data and business in equal measures + has industry expertise)
2) Data Connections
What’s the most efficient way to get at the necessary data right now (to achieve some impact as quickly as possible) + build a roadmap for future use of APIs and automation techniques to remove humans from the connection and data pulling stages.
- Who – Data Engineer
3) Data Warehouse Build/Data Modelling
Building a fast, efficient, intuitive yet scalable environment for your data to live in is key to setting up for success. The goal here is to be amazing right now but continue to deliver over the next 5-10 years.
- Who – Data Architect
4) Initial Data Analysis
Working with business stakeholders to identify initial hypotheses questions and start building dashboards to answer those questions
- Who – Data Analyst
5) Insight Delivery
Many times, this will be the same as above, however, uncovering insights and delivering them to the business are 2 very different disciplines. Insight delivery is all about being able to tell an engaging story around the insights & working with your end users to understand how they learn/engage – do they want charts and graphs? Do they want conditionally formatted tables? Do they want notifications when something is worth looking at? – this will help bring stakeholders on the journey and increase adoption of data-usage within the business.
- Who – Business Analyst
6) Insight Refinement
Teamwork makes the dream work. Having sat with the initial insights for a while, it’s time to put them through some scrutiny… am I able to create actions that generate impact, or does it need a tweak or two? Do I need to introduce more data sources? Maybe ask a different question?
- Who – Data Analyst + Business Stakeholder
So far, so intuitive, right? The challenge is; anybody that’s ever had half an eye on recruitment for tech roles will have their eyes watering at this point.
It’s just not feasible for small and medium businesses to hire the necessary talent needed to extract maximum value.
A) they are expensive
B) they are in demand
C) they aren’t utilised for long periods, meaning their salaries are going to waste whilst they sit on the bench.
So, the work gets piled onto the analyst, who slowly drowns in a backlog of projects whilst never really having the time (or the core skills) to deliver insights that will have impact.
No one’s fault, that’s just how it goes down. It’s a challenge that’s existed for as long as data has been seen as valuable.
So, what’s the solution?
Well, we certainly have one here at Datore.
Analytics as a Service combines cutting-edge technology, a rock-solid methodology and, most importantly, access to every single one of those data disciplines mentioned above for a single monthly subscription.
The beauty is, we provide the people with those skills ‘on demand’.
Not sure where to start with regards to identifying short-, medium- and long-term objectives?
– Let us run those initial workshops for you.
Need to make sure you build strong data foundations?
– We have engineers and architects to support that.
Want to make sure that you not only uncover insights but also build a super-engaging data experience for your end-users?
– No problem, we have analysts and design experts to help with that as well.
At Datore, we offer Analytics as a Service, providing access to a comprehensive suite of data expertise on demand. Let us help you streamline your data journey and maximize your impact. Contact us today to learn more about how we can support your data-driven success.