Four Pillars of a Successful Data Strategy: Making Better Business Decisions

The amount of data compiled by a business can be overwhelming and as a result, many companies struggle to organize, analyze, define, protect and leverage their data. Part of that comes from not having a clearly defined data strategy in place – or not knowing how to construct one that works best for your business.

If your current approach to managing your data is not working or if you have not constructed a comprehensive data strategy at all, this article is for you. In it, we will discuss a “four pillars” approach that will help you implement a comprehensive and effective data strategy.

We will define the role each pillar should play when constructing and deploying your data strategy and demonstrate how it will help you make better business decisions.

Typically, in a spreadsheet or traditional BI report, data is often haphazardly organized in multiple rows and columns on a page. What that leads to is manually reviewing row after row and column after column in ways that are outdated and time-consuming. This can be tantamount to searching for a needle in a haystack when you are trying to identify critical findings.

That is why the best way to format your data and truly bring it to life is by visualizing it graphically. This will provide instant visibility into any outliers, trends, and/or issues that require resolution.

Data visualization makes it easier for everyone to understand what the data is showing – especially in these days of shrinking attention spans. It also empowers your colleagues to question why something appears to be inaccurate, and then allows them to drill down to discover the root cause of the issue.

Governance is the most crucial factor to consider whenever faced with what is referred to as “reporting anarchy.” Without a single source of truth, business users can easily lose confidence in data. And without proper governance, business logic is often duplicated in reports and lacks standardization, resulting in your data becoming completely unmanageable.

Taking a data model approach to governing all data, metrics, and relationships based on a single source of truth will ensure accurate reporting and analytics. It will also serve as a standardized process for developers and analysts by providing them with a methodology that stretches across all corporate data and formula logic.

As a result, everyone will follow the same procedures and standards. With proper governance, each team member’s view of the data is limited to only what is applicable to them based on the security defined by your organization.

Formulating a reliable data governance plan ensures that your data will be pulled from the defined source.  But do not stop there. Be sure to combine it with the consistent use of predefined measures and KPIs, because once it is removed from the source and manipulated, you can no longer be confident in the numbers.

Every organization faces challenges when trying to make their data and content accessible to as many team members as possible. That is why the third pillar – accessibility – is so important.

Sharing traditional reports in spreadsheets is clunky and leads to endless email exchanges with multiple versions being shared back and forth. Based on the volume of data in a spreadsheet, it can be difficult to share with other team members effectively. There is also the issue of getting the data to the right person – i.e., the Controller, Project Manager, Salesperson, etc. – in the right format. Making it fully accessible to team members in each of those various roles is beyond challenging.

Making data accessible anytime and anywhere to any device provides many quantifiable benefits. Managers can quickly get access to their key metrics and data analysis on their smartphone or tablet in seconds.