Why Your Company Should Have a Data Driven Culture

By: Kevin Faber

The Information Age has made way for several innovations across the business world. While the business industry—much like the American educational system—has been slow to the uptake of implementing technological advancements into their marketing and planning strategies, the 2020s herald a new age for the use of data and technological advancement in companies big and small. 2019 is a fantastic transition year for learning how to use big data in a big way.

In the 21st century, businesses have been trending towards implementing strategies to improve company culture. Not only have these innovations improved productivity among staff members, but they have boosted successful recruit onboarding processes and improved company branding as a whole. Company culture has become an inseparable entity for identifying if a business is healthy. The next step to implementing company culture into your productivity is becoming a data-driven culture.

Forbes defines being a data driven culture as being, “an operating environment that seeks to leverage data whenever and wherever possible to enhance business efficiency and effectiveness.” This definition leaves business owners with a large scope to explore. While this is encouraging—since the possibilities are literally endless—it leaves many business owners with confusion as to where to begin. Forbes explains that there is no hard and fast rule for implementing this knowledge, but the following tips will give you an idea of how to use big data throughout every department in your operation.

Tip #1: Collaboration

Data—such as quota markers, employee assessments, and daily productivity percentages—can be used to boost overall team productivity. By providing numbers which show corporate and personal progress, data has the power to illustrate where employees are falling short and flourishing. These results can be then translated to analyzing the strategies used to create those results. Whether or not the results are good or bad, the strategy analytics are useful in seeing where processes can be optimized. Sometimes this is improving an employee’s skill set. Sometimes an entirely new plan needs to be set in motion. Sometimes a certain relationship needs to be fostered. Whatever the case, big data is the key to finding productivity gaps and person to person collaboration is the way to fill them.

Tip #2: Lead By Example

If employees are expected to use data to track their productivity throughout the day, they need to see their managers doing the same. Managers need to constantly view data through metadata management tools and optimize their own habits to ensure that this data is being put to good use. By going into meetings with numbers and a game plan to collaboratively finding a solution, leaders show their employees that there is a purpose in data other than just tracking. By implementing new strategies on a regular basis, managers show their employees that applying lessons to what the data shows means greater productivity, greater collaboration, more fun projects and opportunities, and more revenue for departments and employee salaries. The use of data is revolutionary, but managers have to be willing to trailblaze for their employees to follow.

Tip #3: Informed Decision Making

In addition to demonstrating consistent application, managers can rest assured that using big data across the board gives them the greatest tools for making informed decisions. Tricky situations can be addressed with great confidence because the manager has been presented with the department’s complete set of data. This allows them to stand back, make an objective observation and then make a decision according to the facts. Facts are impossible to argue with—though people try. This is why data must come out over personal opinions and feelings when it comes to making executive decisions. Numbers do not lie. Managers need to hold to their convictions in the numbers to demonstrate just how important it is to take data seriously.

Tip #4: Confident Product and Service Launching

Informed decision making gives way to the ability to confidently launch new products and services. By having a complete picture of data across departments, leaders not only know how long it takes a department to complete a task, but they know how much it costs, which employees meet quotas the best, which employees are team players, how their resources are holding up, and a whole host of other integral pieces of information which influence the timeline of a new product. By measuring all of this data, leaders can determine the exact ramifications of launching a new product from conception to distribution. This allows managers to create impeccable timelines for production—and even schedule in some time for unexpected delays which inevitably occur.

Conclusion:

Overall, the use of big data heralds several incredible applications for the business world. Not only will the use of big data help put together optimal teams, it will help businesses launch new products with the right amount of speed to produce the best quality. No wonder big data is on the rise to change the business landscape as we know it.

By Kevin Faber