📝 MY NOTES #15 - Your company's success isn't measured in megabytes, it's measured in impact

Theme - Being Value driven than Data driven

Mar 18, 2024

Hello everyone,

Few weeks ago I had the chance to attend the Data Summit 2024 where speakers from different organizations spoke about a myriad of topics related to data. There were 10 sessions given by people who were CEOs, Data Managers, Data Engineers. Below are the titles of all the sessions I attended. In the coming weeks I will be posting my notes from each of these sessions & these titles will turn into links that you can use to jump between different session notes -

Why failed MVPs are your second most important KPI
Driving data-driven success: Practical approaches to use case prioritization for optimal business impact
Data Insight in the Fast Lane: How One Online Bank Reduced Time to Insight and Transformed its Future
Building a winning data culture
Beyond the Basics: The last 10 things data teams think about
Navigating the maze of specialization in data engineering
Building a shared foundation of trust through data storytelling
The dynamic duo of data and machine learning engineering in cybersecurity
Your Company's Success isn't Measured in megabytes, it's measured in impact!

Let’s start with the final Data summit session I attended-

Your company's success isn't measured in megabytes, it's measured in impact

The Speaker :

Samir Sharma, CEO & Founder at Datazuum

Samir started by introducing the goal of the webinar -

How data teams work among themselves with the goal of driving decision making.

One of the biggest mistakes made by Data teams is that they operate on a “Data Level” which is almost like finding a needle in a haystack!

Because teams are trying to look for some useful information from a huge amount of data to respond to some business questions & hence provide insights which would help business take decisions & actions for the related issue.

This conventional doesn’t hold well when we put it in the the context of post pandemic or present day where the world is full of VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity)

Samir proposes a more disruptive approach where the process would start from Value. A lot of times professionals talk about building data driven companies. The problem with being data driven is that it’s difficult with the major blocks being culture, Change management & processes.

So being Value driven rather than running after being Data driven might make more sense as per Samir. Why?

As per Samir, It’s because Value in an organization is always driven by Business Strategy. Business knows the path they are looking for the next 5-10 years, we know what the objectives are, usually they are linked to Customer satisfaction, Process optimization, Compliance etc.

As an Example of this disruptive approach -

Let’s say, The CEO sets the objective of increasing customer retention by 10% and communicates this goal to the organization.

Following this first step would be to decide what Actions can be taken to address Customer retention & based on that what decisions might need to be taken with respect to different facets of the business operations. Next step would necessitate the different Insights that would be required for achieving the previously mentioned steps. Those Insights then would turn into Business Questions that would be translated to Data teams & then data teams can focus on that specific business need to generate value throughout the whole chain.

The Data Strategy Canvas

Samir shares an interesting tool he has been using with his clients called the Data Strategy Canvas. He gives an example using the case of ACME ltd. -

There are 2 parts of this canvas -

Above the line - This part is really about engaging with the business stakeholders, which might include talking to business in their language to drive more fruitful conversations (something very important for data teams as per Samir)
The different elements of this part are -
1. Key Business Question - There are 2 kind of KBQS - Key Performance Questions & Key Analytical Questions.
  Samir says the key is to ask Stakeholder to think of questions about Business that they have never asked from themselves before.
2. Decisions - Based on the KBQs corresponding decisions need to be noted down. It could be which region we are going to target for increasing conversion? Which product we are going to focus on? etc etc..
3. Actions - Based on the decisions taken, Actions need to be decided such as Which kind of marketing campaign we want to put in Action to achieve our business goal.
  The points above wrap up what data teams need to do with business stakeholders to understand their vision of Value. The next part brings in the technical aspect of things -
4. Systems & Data Needs - Based on our goal we try to understand where the required data lives in the IT systems? Do we have all the data needed? Do we need external data to support our decision making? A good practice is to divide data into the following categories -
  1. First-Party Data: Information collected directly from your own audience or customers through interactions with your brand or website.
  2. Second-Party Data: Data that originates from another organization but is shared with your organization through a direct relationship or partnership.
  3. Third-Party Data: Data obtained from external sources or providers that are not directly affiliated with your organization.
5. Setting the priorities - This part essentially takes care of exploring data which is new, checking its quality, looking for missing data & deciding on the importance of data available based on set objectives.
Below the line - Now that we have set our objectives & we know the data available to us this is where we start getting into the nitty-gritty of being a data team & showcase our skills.
1. Consumers - This is the time to know & profile your consumers, Who will be consuming the product? Who will be logging in to the app & when?
2. Data Model - What kind of data product we want to deliver/build? It could be as simple as a spreadsheet or a data model or a dashboard etc. Again to decide these things we point towards the Key Business Questions as the guidelines.
3. Business Processes - This is where you understand the dependencies in the business processes. Which functions will get impacted by the work?
4. Success Factors - This is very similar to KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) which will help us quantify the impacts of our efforts.
5. Internal & External Impacts - It’s a huge deal to understand the internal impacts of the objectives we decided at the beginning. For example - Let’s say we decided to build a data product for which the data team doesn’t have the required skills, that would hamper the progress of the project hugely or if there is part of Change management, It might take longer to bring everyone on the same page.
  For External factors it’s important to consider factors such as Politics, Economical or competition. For example - Is there a new regulation coming in our target region which might hamper our efforts
6. Monetization - Finally to make a solid business case it’s of utmost importance to understand the Return on Investment. For example - If you are providing a freemium app to the users, What are your estimates about number of people who will become premium members & turn the product profitable.

Samir provided a great framework for data teams to become Value driven & hence get integrated more into the value addition part of the Business. Personally I have been on both sides & being Value driven definitely adds more clarity for data roles which is a big plus. When you know what you are looking for the search becomes easier!

This edition marks the end of our Data summit series, from next week we will move on to new horizons to keep learning more about the curious world of Analytics!

The Weekend Freelancer

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