Many businesses still struggle to identify where they can gain the largest benefits from implementing true data driven decision making. Sometimes the effort is focused on areas where the gains are relatively small, the data behind is not of sufficient quality, or the implemented systems turn out to be difficult to make operational. Either way, the full potential is most likely not obtained for the organization.
In this blogpost, we outline a few key topics that should be considered, when looking for long-term benefits from data driven decision making.
How to find the growth pockets within your organization and ensure successful implementation: The scoping phase, potential data quality challenges and the risk of developing overcomplicated systems
A key principle in successful implementation is to make a structured approach to define exactly where in the business operation it will deliver the highest expected value and how it can potentially work out. This can be approached by addressing a few basic questions:
- What exact business challenge or operational task do we want to solve or optimize?
It should not be underestimated how important it is to scope and formulate the actual business need correctly, as a very first step. Be sure that you have internal alignment of the goal, as this is very important for success in the implementation!
- Do we have a solid data foundation in that area of the business?
An understanding of data quality and whether it allows to solve the desired scope, is crucial in order to obtain success. If data is not 100 % in place yet, your focus should be to ensure better data quality going forward, before implementing any decision making based on it!
- Are we able to react on it and make it operational in our day-to-day work?
Don’t get tempted into building decision making systems that you are not able to react on. The possibilities for creating data driven decision making are endless today and you can end up with overwhelming outcomes. Don’t forget to be realistic about the organizational or operational constraints, if you want it to succeed in the long run!
This may sound as an oversimplification of the task 😊 And it can of course be more complex than this. But it is crucial to address at least these above questions, before investing in the creation of any data driven decision making setup within your organization.
If you want to learn more about how we help businesses and organizations obtain new levels of growth through data driven decision-making, don’t hesitate to reach out.