Why Having the Right Data Strategy Is Critical to Your Company’s Success
Back in 2006, when Jonathan Goldman arrived at the LinkedIn headquarters, the company still had just under eight million accounts.
Goldman, who had a PhD in physics from Stanford, started looking at the richness of user profiles and began to imagine ways to capitalize on the information he studied. While the data proved unwieldy and messy, he began formulating theories and possible new features to help scale up the site.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the engineering team wasn’t very interested in his findings, if not dismissive altogether. After all, why change the status quo?
Fortunately, as Thomas H. Davenport and D.J. Patil write in their story for Harvard Business Review, LinkedIn’s co-founder and CEO at the time, Reid Hoffman, “had faith in the power of analytics because of his experiences at PayPal, and he had granted Goldman a high degree of autonomy.”
That decision would end up being fruitful and would significantly shape the company’s upward trajectory. By making Goldman its “data scientist,” Linkedin was able to capitalize on big data and become the powerhouse it is today.
This may not come as a surprise, but the way many companies address their data is all over the map these days. From not fully trusting analytics to actually recoiling from it — many leaders have trouble engaging with their data and are missing out on strategic opportunities.
According to a Harvard Business Review report, executives, managers, and professionals are plagued by inaccurate, obsolete, or hard-to-access data, exacerbating the stresses of making decisions in real time. “The need for accurate, timely, and insightful decision support has never been greater. Yet many organizations struggle to capitalize on analytics’ vast potential.”
All of this is to say, you can keep operating by the seat of your pants or you can begin to skillfully use data. Here’s why I recommend the latter.
“It is important to remember that the goal is not simply to get all you can out of your data,” writes Thomas C. Redman. “Rather, you want to leverage your data in ways that create new growth, cut waste, increase customer satisfaction, or otherwise improve company performance.”
At my company, JotForm, we treat analytics as an opportunity to optimize human potential — using it to challenge our assumptions, develop new insights, and use what we learn to take action. What’s more? By positioning ourselves as students, we don’t only reinforce a positive culture, we are also better able to serve our customers.
In writing for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Leslie Bradshaw explains that
Indeed. You want to think of the bigger picture here.
