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Do you want to grow your business, innovate, drive efficiencies, &/or create new revenue streams? Of course, you do! Well data is the starting point…and this is the only data-focused roundup you’ll ever need!
DATA TIPS
In DATA DATA DATA, I want to share the most important lessons learnt that I’ve realised in the last 5 years since I set up Data3 and started working with SMEs on their data challenges and data opportunities.
This time, it’s – break down the data silos.
Business data within an organisation is rarely neatly aligned to one department, business function, let alone a specific role. Data is ubiquitous. Think about the different types of data within a business – from finance, to sales, to customer, to product, to service, to marketing, and people. Most departments will have an interest in each data source, but they’ll just need to look at that data through a different lens, depending on their specific role and responsibilities.
When we work with our clients, we do a data audit and requirement-gathering exercise that runs across all business departments – finance, sales, marketing, customer service, and more. We ALWAYS find that each data source is required to inform business insight across multiple departments and rarely is a data source only valued by one department. Think about finance data – the finance team will need it for financial reporting, of course, but the sales team will need it to track their sales revenue figures, and marketing will need it to track customer lifetime value and return on investment. So, if you only look at data in a department-by-department siloed way, you’ll miss out on combined business opportunities.
So, start breaking down your data silos today.
DATA IN THE NEWS
When it comes to data in the news, the data you’ll see the most often in the news, or after the news, is weather data. As I started my career at The Met Office, you’ll be unsurprised to hear that I LOVE a weather map.
My first job, fresh out of uni, was working for the Marine Buoy Programme at The Met Office. My job involved going out to sea, on mooring vessels with a Glaswegian crew, for days on end, out to weather buoys floating off the continental shelf of Ireland. Our job was to change the wind vanes, anemometers, and temperature gauges on the weather buoys to ensure they provided an accurate on-the-ground comparison for the weather models created by the Met Office’s supercomputers. A crazy first job!
Since then, I’ve loved incorporating weather data into data projects, and it’s often a great source of insight into forecasting demand for weather-related products and services. From a demand for taxis, to a demand for salad, weather data can prove enlightening in a data project.
Luckily, there’s loads of free weather data out there so, if you can think of some use cases for your business or project, check out The Met Office’s DataPoint at https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/services/data/datapoint/.
DATA THEMES
In the first three issues of DATA DATA DATA, I focused on the three most frequent questions, the team and I get asked – Microsoft or AWS? Power BI or Tableau? And ‘should we buy off-the-shelf tools or build it ourselves’?
This time it’s ‘should we recruit in-house or use a data agency’? The answer is usually a mix of both.
Depending on your organisation there are data tasks that may need to be done every single day, so they are BAU or business-as-usual tasks. If you know you need a suite of dashboards to be created across your business, it might make sense for you to recruit a dedicated role in-house that will create and maintain dashboards for your business.
Whereas there are other data tasks that only need to be done now and again, on a project basis. For instance, a data architect will only need to design your technology stack, and make decisions on technology selection, every few years. So, you may not need this role in-house or full-time, so you could bring this expertise in from a data consultancy on an on-demand basis whenever it’s required.
Alternatively, one business may want to have an in-house role to work on continuous data science work, so recruiting a data scientist will therefore make sense. Whereas another business, might only want to do data science work on an ad-hoc project basis, so working with a data consultancy business to bring this expertise in on-demand, will make sense.
Here’s a summary based on our experiences of where in-house roles work better than outsourced roles, and vice versa:
In future issues of DATA DATA DATA, I’ll cover other frequent questions that I’ve come across when talking data with our clients…anyone want to guess what they are?
DATA CRAZINESS
I LOVE seeing examples of good/bad/funny data visualisations, data wins, data mistakes, and more. And apparently, loads of other people do too.
Here are some great blogs focused entirely on bad data visualisations, which I’ve found online:
- 15 Bad Data Visualization Examples – these ones are bad for a range of reasons, from colour usage, to confusing use of graphics, through to amazing levels of complexity. Do you think they’re all bad? – https://rigorousthemes.com/blog/bad-data-visualization-examples/
- 5 examples of bad data visualization – this time, there are only five, but they’re goodies, and range from confusing graphics to mind-blowing detail on a bar chart – https://www.jotform.com/blog/bad-data-visualization/
- When Data Visualization Really Isn’t Useful (and When It Is) – oooh, there are some good ones in here! Check out the emoticon one and the swirly line one…impressively complex but worryingly confusing – https://www.oldstreetsolutions.com/good-and-bad-data-visualization
Have fun revelling in other people’s bad data visualisations…!
Have you seen any examples of data craziness you want to share? Please drop me a line.
DATA QUOTES
Love a data quote? I do too. And you’ll absolutely love this list of 19 data-related quotes – https://pipeline.zoominfo.com/operations/19-inspirational-quotes-about-data.
In future issues, I’ll share more quotes I hear, quotes I read, quotes you tell me about, and more – what’s your favourite data-related quote? Let me know and we’ll find a data-related prize for the best one.
DATA FREEBIES
Want to create a data strategy and don’t know to start? I’ve got you. Drop me a line, tell me a little about your business (eg B2B or B2C, UK or Global), and I’ll send you a data strategy template that’s right for your business.
In future issues, I’ll share more links to super useful, completely FREE videos, guides, templates, and similar…so, there are loads more freebies to come.
Thank you for reading…I’ll be back soon with more data news.
And, if you’re in data hell, I’m data Hels!
Recommend a friend or colleague to join our mailing list for DATA DATA DATA – hello@data-cubed.co.uk or connect with me on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/helentanner/