What are the top ways to ensure a successful data and analytics initiative?

Data is the fuel of the digital economy, which is essentially catalysing the emergence of more data-driven companies. However, implementing a successful data and analytics initiative means overcoming a number of challenges.

The challenge

According to a whitepaper from Tealium and industry analyst Prolet Miteva, today's digital businesses use 91 cloud services on average. As a result, the utilisation of so many technologies creates fragmented data that sits in silos.

Companies are often unable to see a single view of their customer due to siloed, fragmented and disparate data sources. Nevertheless, there are many processes and procedures that can rectify this issue.

Specifically, the report outlines the top three ways that companies can create a high performing data and analytics initiative. According to Miteva, the first step to unifying data starts with unifying people within the business.

Hire smart and curious talent

First and foremost, the report insists that hiring smart and curious people is integral to ensuring a successful initiative. In regards to curiosity, this entails "having the drive to try and find more meaning from data and to dig deeper."

In order to find this type of person, behavioural-focused interviews are a must. While quantitative accomplishments are important, situational questions are great at discovering "who the person is behind the person on the resume (or in the interview)."

Ensure good quality data that can integrate

Good quality and actionable data is also fundamental to businesses as it ultimately enables professionals to make better decisions. This data should be "accurate, clean, complete, compliant, and timely" in order to qualify as good quality.

Once the data is good quality, a company can then seamlessly integrate it between different martech systems. Within this process, however, it is important that everyone takes responsibility when verifying data for accuracy and cleanliness.

Educate teams on data and analytics

Finally, the report insists that offering employee training on a data and analytics initiative is crucial. This should include platform and solution based training, alongside guidance on how to read and interpret data and subsequently derive insights for the business.

By constantly immersing teams in data and analytics, companies can ensure that their initiatives are successful. In fact, Tealium actually offers global education bootcamps, an online learning community, and other helpful tools and resources for employees, partners, customers, and even prospects.

Enjoyed this piece? Check out the Top 10 Companies Unifying Data in 2019