How to Develop a Data-driven Culture in Your Organization

In 2018, there is no denying that data-savvy companies are poised to gain a more significant market share than competitors who are unable to efficiently analyze and utilize the massive amount of data they collect. As a business owner, you want to create a data-driven culture within your organization where you are leveraging data as much as possible to improve your firm’s performance.

There is no one-step, quick-fix formula for creating such a culture; instead, it is a result of time, effort, and thoughtful leadership. If you want to follow in the footsteps of data-driven giants such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon and take your firm to the next level, here is how to develop a data-driven culture in your organization.

1. Ensure your leadership is committed to data-loving.

There is no way that your organization is going to suddenly embrace a data-driven culture if they don’t see leadership doing the same. For this reason, the first step to generating this culture is to ensure your administration is committed to immersing themselves in data and epitomizing the behaviors that you expect the rest of your business to imitate.

Start by having your leaders use data on a daily basis. This will show other employees that the leadership is gaining value from regularly tracking the numbers and will inspire them to follow. Additionally, commit to using data when making all future decisions. This too will prove to employees how much you value the knowledge that the data is providing.

Opt to publicize critical data metrics in prominent public locations to demonstrate that the entire team collectively owns these metrics and targets. Commit to providing corporate training wherever your business is locate.

In other words, those in leadership roles in your enterprise must take every opportunity to demonstrate the reasons why and the benefits of embracing data in all aspects of the firm.

2. Handle data as you would any other asset.

In order to have your whole organization appreciate the crucial importance of data, you need to all regard it just as you would any other asset. At this point, data is not just something to make decisions with and to improve your customer’s experience (although those things are indeed necessary), but it is also very much a business asset.

Your team can no longer overlook the value of data nor breeze over who is responsible for managing and analyzing it. Data should be an integral part of your business strategy, and the quality of the data you collect should be as high as possible.

By treating data as the asset that it is, you will be one giant step closer to thoroughly addressing data gaps, ensuring that information is aligned with your overall business strategy and sustaining data quality so that you aren’t making decisions on insufficient knowledge.

3. Hire data-driven people.

To keep your organization’s culture fresh and innovative, you need to bring people to the team who are also fresh and innovative. If you want to become more data-driven, then when you are recruiting, you must make sure to focus on hiring data-driven people because you are also going to need them to work to grow the culture.

In potential employees, you want to see someone who is able to think critically with data, who can ask relevant questions about it, and who can successfully analyze the answers. You want employees who can use the data to support points that they bring up.

During interviews, ensure that candidates think to form follow-up questions about the data. In fact, you want them to never stop asking questions, as innately curious people who automatically think critically are the cornerstone of building an organization’s culture of analytics.

Additionally, hire people who are brilliant and who want to grab every occasion to employ their intellect. This is how you will continue to enhance your data-driven culture.

4. Provide data analysis skills or training.

In all aspects of your business, it is vital that your employees are continually learning and always growing and enhancing their skills. Therefore, providing data analysis skills or training to all members of the team is an excellent way to drive more profound progress into a data-driven culture.

For example, a data analytics course will help your team understand how they can implement data analysis methods to develop the operational and project-based work they do and how to select the appropriate tools for analyzing diverse data sets. These statistical methods will also assist them in handling ambiguity in decision-making and improve all forms of organizational performance measurement.

These types of data analysis skills or training courses are suitable for everyone in your firm, from strategists to business analysts, supply chain and IT managers, and administrative employees.

Also, to go along with showing that your leadership is committed to data-loving, make sure that all executives in your firm opt to take part in the data analysis skills training. By taking the time and making an effort to take part in this training —despite their packed schedules — sends a clear message to the rest of the team that these skills are essential to the success of the entire firm.

Reaping the Rewards

Too many organizations shy away from collecting more data, blaming the high price of data collection, hosting and sustaining, payrolls of data analysts, and danger of breach. However, by creating a data-driven culture and thoroughly utilizing the data, you can reap huge rewards that will quickly overtake the high costs.

In addition to forming a data-driven culture across the board, your firm must also have processes and systems in place to gather and access high-quality data, high-levels of data literacy in the workforce, and suitable data-driven decision-making processes that are understood by all.

For some firms, this may only require a small change; for others, a massive shift. But there is no denying that all who decide to embrace data will benefit in the long run.

Does your organization have a data-driven culture? Are you working towards it? What are you finding to be challenging about making it happen? Let’s start a discussion in the comments below!

AUTHOR BIO

With over 20 years of experience in B2B marketing, Annick Nuyens first worked in the hospitality service industry and then moved to the knowledge industry. She currently works for Informa in the Dubai office, where she oversees marketing for public and inhouse training courses, conferences, exhibitions and managed events across the Middle East and Africa.