Hey there! Let’s talk about why building a data-driven culture in a company can be such a challenging task. It’s not just about technology – it’s more of an organizational puzzle involving people and processes.
According to a recent survey, only a quarter of respondents see technological limitations as the main roadblock to becoming data-driven. So, what’s the secret sauce to fostering a culture where data is king?
Well, one key strategy is to integrate data seamlessly into your stakeholders’ workflows. By minimizing barriers to access and bringing insights directly to where they work, you can ensure that data becomes a valuable resource rather than a distant concept.
For example, our Sales team leverages Salesforce as their main hub for information. By embedding our BI tool directly into Salesforce, we’ve made it easy for them to access crucial reports without disrupting their workflow.
Developing continual, actionable awareness is another vital tactic. We use “pulse” channels to keep everyone in the loop about important updates, from deal progress to customer milestones. These channels ensure that everyone stays informed and can take immediate action when needed.
✌️ Integrate seamlessly with your stakeholders’ workflows
Another way to drive data asset adoption and visibility is to minimize the barrier to access. A few additional clicks can make the difference between stakeholders never seeing the beautiful dashboard you built and the dashboard becoming a staple resource they view daily.
For example, our Sales team heavily uses Salesforce as their “default” space to view information on accounts or prospects. Rather than draw them away from the UI and workflows they’re accustomed to, we leveraged Omni’s (our BI tool) embed functionality to bring insight-rich reports directly into Salesforce.
The best part? The embed URLs can be parameterized to pre-filter the data for the specific customer, opportunity, or contact the end user is currently viewing!
🔄 Develop continual, actionable awareness
At incident.io, we’re big fans of “pulse” channels — Slack channels where topic-specific updates are automatically posted. These cover a wide range of product, commercial, and engineering use cases, from NPS responses to app deployment results.
These pulses promote organization-wide awareness of important matters and ensure the whole organization stays regularly updated with relevant information.
🪥 Build data habits to build a data culture
When dissecting why a company is data-driven, it often boils down to a collection of smaller behaviors and habits that are collectively encouraged and reinforced. Here are some more small ways in which we promote a data-driven culture at incident.io:
- Every week, a member from the data team stands in front of the company during our all-hands meeting to present a weekly data insight, affectionately known as the Tasty Data Morsel.
- Encouraging anyone and everyone to post data-related questions, ideas, and suggestions into a shared channel, where a member of the data team can help out.
- We have a series of ‘office display dashboards’ that rotate across screens in our office, tailored to each team, to rally them around a common set of metrics.
🎁 TL;DR
Building a data-driven culture goes beyond technology implementation; it’s about cultivating organizational habits that prioritize data in decision-making. The key is making data accessible, relevant, and actionable for all stakeholders.
Consistent reinforcement of these practices builds a culture where data-driven decision-making becomes instinctive. So, are you ready to take your company’s data culture to the next level?
