Sandra is a Marketing Lead in a popular FMCG firm. Her role requires her to be on her toes with the impact of brand messaging that goes out to customers, including retailers, channel partners, and end consumers.
Does the campaign click with people? How are people reacting to it? How have sales numbers changed with changes in the marketing mix?
She experienced sporadic success in the campaigns she ran but had a hard time building consistency. To her, the journey of being ‘good to great’ looked exhausting and unreal. Many a time, what she planned with her team didn’t come through in results. She spoke of various bottlenecks –
- Most of the ideas were instinct-driven, for the untimeliness of data and insights. By the time, data recached her, it would have gotten obsolete and new data would have been generated.
- Lack of coherence and collaboration in the team. Teams witnessed functional silos within and outside of the department. Conversations took the form of Chinese whispers till they reached concerned recipients.
All of it added up to one major reason – culture. 5 years ago, her firm hired a full-time Chief Data Officer, but ‘on the ground’ reality hardly changed.
Buying software platforms is a matter of financial investment but how does one ensure cultural adoption of technology! That was yet the biggest question.
Sandra’s situation is not unique. Most of the organizations, irrespective of their size, are facing challenges when it comes to developing a data-driven organization – an organization where every individual is empowered to benefit from data and analytics in their role, for cumulative business impact.
Businesses need to break functional silos and move from data isolation to data democratization. Simply put, it’s not just about the volume of data businesses are generating. It’s about the breadth and depth of its reach, i.e., the extent of data reach and data usage in the organization.
Do people value data over hunch? Does everyone have the same accessibility and understanding of data? What is the first instinct before making a decision- does it involve referring to data?
There are many questions at various levels that come into the picture while building a data-driven organization.
Where do CDOs struggle in empowering people to make data-driven decisions?
- Making data accessible and fathomable to non-experts.
As long as data is in the hands of few, as long it is in formats that need people to gain additional skills outside of their domain, data-driven decision-making will always be a far-fetched dream.
Five different generations are working at workplaces today. We can’t expect everyone to become a data expert. We must bring data on platforms and in formats that everyone, who needs to use it, can avail, and understand.
- Ensuring the data is ‘relevant’ and ‘usable’.
Imagine if you asked Alexa for today’s weather and it responded tomorrow. Not relevant anymore!
One of the biggest challenges that various BI tools struggle to fix is the timing of data. There is a time-window for each data set. Suppose a sales representative is on the field and he needs to show some sales figures to a store owner. But the BI tool he is using takes hours to generate reports, he would always refrain from using the tool.
- Eliminating functional silos and bringing coherence in teams.
Be it marketing and sales or HR and L&D or product/finance teams, organizations have many boundaries restraining cross-collaboration. Data floats in silos across functions. No matter how strong your BI is, if teams find it difficult to communicate with each other, BI investment would be more of a cost than value.
- Breaking stereotypes flowing across the enterprise.
This is a critical one. There are many stereotypes when it comes to data usage for decision-making. It is assumed to be owned by certain (IT) departments. It is assumed to be the role of data-savvy teams to own and guard the data. If data is to be democratized and data-driven decision-making is to be practiced, organizations need to make it ‘simple’ and ‘tempting’ to use it.
- Inculcating data-loyalty as a value when it comes to decision making.
Shifting from what-should-we-do-next to let’s-see-data-to-determine-what-to-do-next is the shift that businesses need. However, the complexity of finding, using, and updating data reports further exacerbates the current situation. Moreover, the time it takes to prepare data is massive. Data scientists report that data preparation can take up to 80% of the time spent on a project.
How does Beagle address these challenges?
Beagle was created with the intent of empowering people with data, whether working as individual collaborators or in teams. This new-age BI technology makes data adoption ‘simple and lucrative’. Let’s see how –
- Beagle lives inside collaboration tools – MS Teams.
Quite literally! Anyone and everyone can chat with Beagle inside MS Teams. to ask for the information they are looking for. ATAWAD – Any Time, Anywhere, Any Device. Whether your employee is out on the field or working from home or in a meeting, they can simply converse with Beagle and get the most updated data insights within seconds.
With this, Beagle ensures data democratization and breaks stereotypes.
- Beagle offers data in the simplest, ready-to-use formats possible.
Thus, saving on training cost and time and empowering every unit of hierarchy in decision making. Beagle is a conversational BI tool. It responds to you in the way as if your favorite colleague would. It breaks down long reports into bytes, so it’s simple to process and use. It doesn’t differentiate between experts and non-experts. It’s simple for everyone.
- Beagle fosters collaboration by bringing data and people together.
By pulling data from all sources and aggregating them in one place, it ensures no relevant data is lost.
By being available on the same platform – MS Teams, in the pre-decided format, eliminates the risk of misinterpretation among individuals/teams working with the same data sets.
- Beagle enhances data-loyalty amongst employees.
- Employees can like, share, comment for quick feedback, and pin/download them for future reference.
- They can customize reports every-time there is a new requirement by making changes in the particular ‘card’, instead of making changes in the whole system.
- By giving relevant information in real-time, in an interesting format, Beagle encourages employees to use data to their benefit.
Data-driven decision-making as a practice is a function of culture and values in the organization. To inculcate the culture, one must focus on the desirability, accessibility, and usability of data.
With MS Teams, Beagle is reducing the distance between data and decision-makers at every step.
If you would like to know more, schedule a demo with us.