Data and analytics can speak volumes, and yet, in reality, they can’t speak for themselves. Their proof points are powerful business levers, but ensuring organisational alignment and buy-in to act on them are key to success. This requires continuous advocacy in a common language, and crafting a compelling story to ensure adoption across all levels of a business, so all teams can make educated decisions and power better outcomes.
While technology can do the basics, connecting future success to all KPIs, stakeholder needs and the full business is something that needs human assessment, change management and storytelling. That is what can truly overcome the fear of uncertainty, resistance to change and the biased opinions that we all have. In budget discussions, these data-driven stories can be the difference between a successful, competitive outcome and a disaster.
Creating a common language
To tell a story, businesses must first have a common language that all stakeholders speak and understand, top to bottom. But when parts of an organisation work in silos, inconsistency in expectations and markers of success can arise. A holistic measurement approach like Commercial Analytics can build one common currency within the company when defining success and evaluating results with KPIs – the basic vocabulary of a common language.
That language then drives accountability for data-driven decisions and buy-in to the process – and it can change the way results are discussed. For example, ROI has long been a key metric of success, but its position as the dominant success metric has lessened over time, with a corresponding increase in the importance of delivering business outcomes and new customer acquisition. This shift must be communicated across an organisation, or each team will be chasing a different idea of success.
Addressing the skills gap
To create that language and craft stories, you need the right people. Yet, there is an evident skills gap in many businesses when it comes to making data-driven decisions. Marketers point to a lack of data and analytics understanding as the biggest skills gap within their department. This can result in poor strategies married with inconsistent recommendations and should be recognised at the top.
With data and analytics taking on larger roles in decision-making, AI constantly challenging the status quo of technology and fewer skilled workers on the job market, businesses can’t simply rely on fully trained internal experts anymore. But they still need to make sure that the language and decisions are understood throughout the organisation. Therefore, they need to train non-experts internally so they can collaborate with external providers and increase their expertise across teams. Looking outside of the business, ideally a team of external experts should be engaged to avoid internal bias and welcome new knowledge across different industries and companies.
Telling stories with data
Adding in the data sources will then help you craft the right stories for future success. When assessing the results of a Commercial Analytics program, program leaders must focus on what they need to know in order to answer the key business questions. They must remember that analytics should be used to help make the right decisions, not to support what a business wanted to do anyway. Only asking the right questions really helps in finding the right answers – so leaders shouldn’t limit themselves to the questions they’ve asked before, and be cautious of getting sidetracked by questions that seem interesting to know. This will help them better understand the true risks and opportunities, and help in integrating them in an unbiased way.
Leaders should also consider how to let others continue the story. While it makes sense to kick off a program with one pioneering team at first, some of our multi-market customers are encouraging their local teams to adjust to their needs and nuances – to own their programs and stories. The story becomes an interactive exchange that fosters a deeper understanding of the impact of leveraging analytic insights.
Talking about the future
You’ve got the language, people and data to craft powerful stories – but how do you know you are making the right decisions? How might a different decision affect things?
Analytic programme leaders can find comfort in uncertainty through scenario planning, and convey that comfort in how they’re presenting the findings. By planning for multiple outcomes and understanding the ‘why?’ behind each scenario, they can find new opportunities in any potential future. When large global brands are proactively informed of potential scenarios and their impacts, they can increase their growth by an average $50m-$100m, without any additional investment.
And change is inevitable – but when staying true to data insights and linking them to key business questions across all teams, leaders can create powerful, data-driven stories that will resonate with their organisation and generate the answers that guide them through the decision-making process. Holistically interpreting data now and in the future for outcome-focused decisioning represents a shift in an organization’s mindset away from “report cards” of previous campaign performance to a more commercial view that generates more buy-in across stakeholders.
There is so much power in simplifying and orchestrating decisions by translating data and analytics into your organisational language – but you will need humans at the helm to activate, interpret and adjust while navigating the choppy waters of doing business.
Justine O’Neill is senior director of Analytic Partners
