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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 IN THE WORLD
The Data3 team had a fun day out recently at Bletchley Park, home of the WW2 codebreakers, and specifically to The Art of Data exhibition – yep, this is what data types do for fun.
Here are some of the highlights we discovered…from Bletchley facts to Honduran elections to Nicolas Cage movies…
…and look at those smiley faces. We were educated and inspired in equal measures. And there are some on-the-wall and in-the-office data visualisations that we are blatantly copying and bringing back to Data3 HQ. Come and see us in Bristol to check them out.
Make sure you pay a visit at https://bletchleypark.org.uk/event/the-art-of-data/
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 prototype first.
When building a dashboard, data visualisation or insight report, it’s tempting to jump straight in and start creating something. The danger is that you don’t think it through properly, or you make incorrect assumptions, and you end up making loads of amends, following user feedback, which is time-consuming and can be frustrating for everyone involved. It’s certainly not efficient or cost-effective either.
After learning this lesson many, many, many times ourselves…we now have a different approach. We always create a super quick prototype first, check it’s right, test it with the users, get lots of feedback, and then build our data visualisation or dashboard with much more confidence and insight. We find this process to be far quicker, much more efficient, and way more enjoyable for everyone involved.
We use a tool called Excalidraw and here’s a prototype I created earlier…
So, my advice is – stop jumping into building dashboards and messing around with data – start with a prototype.
DATA CRAZINESS
I LOVE seeing examples of good/bad/funny data visualisations, data wins, data mistakes, and more.
This one I LOVE…it’s wondrous…I have no words…
Have you seen any examples of data craziness or wondrousness you want to share? Please drop me a line.
DATA THEMES
In previous issues of DATA DATA DATA, I’ve shared the most frequent questions, the team and I get asked – Microsoft or AWS? Power BI or Tableau? Off-the-shelf or DIY? Recruit in-house or use a data consultancy? Data engineer or a data scientist? Data lake, database, or data warehouse? Dashboard vs insight report? To monetise data or not? And GDPR-averse or GDPR-aware?
This time it’s how can we balance the desire to democratise access to data vs data security and commercial confidentiality?
This is a common question we come across on most data projects we work on…
- We want everyone in our organisation to see the metrics that are important for them in their role, so they can perform better and make data-informed decisions
BUT
- We want our data to be secure, unable to be copied/stolen, and locked down so only the top management team can see the commercially sensitive or personally sensitive information
So, how do you achieve both? Or how do you get the right balance? The solution is role-based permissions. Some people will need to see all data, and some people will only need to see data relevant to them. By assigning everyone a role, we can then give the right people access to the right data at the right time in the right way.
For instance:
- Employee personal information can be locked down to only be seen by named individuals in the People/Talent/HR team
- Financial information can be locked down to only be seen by the management team
- Client information can be locked down to only be accessible to people working with that client
- And so on…
So, you can both democratise access to data and ensure your confidential information is only seen by the relevant people.
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 FREEBIES
In this issue, I want to share a solution for those of you who are not ready to start your data transformation, or can’t afford to right now, but still want to progress to be data-informed as quickly as possible.
We created BoomBoard just for you – for businesses who want a super quick, low-cost way to combine their financial, marketing, web, social & business metrics all in one place…without needing to speak to your IT or technology team.
BoomBoard enables you to connect the following data sources together and see your business dashboards in less than 2 minutes…
- Financial data – Xero & Quickbooks
- Customer – HubSpot & Zoho
- Web – Google Analytics
- Social – LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook & Instagram
- Marketing – MailChimp & YouTube
We believe all businesses should be able to check on data like they’d check on the weather…can you? If not, try BoomBoard today – boomboard.io.
In future issues, I’ll share 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 in 2023. 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/ or
Email me at helen@data-cubed.co.uk
