Enterprises in every industry know it’s important to make data-driven decisions in 2021 and beyond. However, becoming a data-driven organization is often far more complicated than business leaders expect.
Simply implementing the best BI tools isn’t enough to reap the benefits of your organization’s data. Shifting to a data-driven approach involves a high-level change in mindset and strategy. Without a 360-degree view of data management and usage, your enterprise will never see the full ROI of your business intelligence investments.
A holistic perspective of your data transforms the way business units within your organization collaborate and make decisions. With a clear vision and a roadmap for your strategy, your teams can take full advantage of credible, real-time data across the enterprise.
Here are some recommendations to help you focus more on taking a 360 approach with all of your data…
Develop a Strategy
Great tools need great processes, and a comprehensive data strategy is essential to getting value from tools like Power BI.
An effective data strategy includes processes and procedures around the collection, storage, integration, accessibility, and governance of your organization’s data. Having this in place helps your team know the data they’re referencing is credible and shows them how to best use the tools available to them.
Your strategy doesn’t only oversee how a new BI tool is rolled out, it creates the foundation for your Center of Excellence and continues to evolve alongside your business needs.
When you become a data-driven organization, every area of your enterprise is impacted by data. Therefore, you need a strategy that starts with an overarching vision for how your enterprise uses its data and creates a fully outlined, scalable roadmap to help your organization accomplish even its most ambitious goals.
A comprehensive strategy leads to exceptional data integrity, a single source of truth within your enterprise, and high adoption rates. Meanwhile, dictating best practices for data management and reporting ensures everyone within your organization uses data appropriately and consistently, reducing the risk of the “Wild West of Reporting” striking your enterprise.
Believe in The Power of Best Practices
Power BI offers tons of ways to collate, analyze, and visualize data. But, without defining your organization’s best practices, your team may become overwhelmed by the new platform and revert to full dependence on the dreaded Excel spreadsheet.
Different business units will have different use cases for data, but overarching best practices develop the foundation that defines how everyone keeps the data set clean and credible. Consistent best practices foster collaboration across business units, improving the overall data literacy within your enterprise.
Every area of your strategy benefits from clearly dictated best practices, especially within a self-service environment. Creating report templates, a dev test environment, and UAT processes are just a few ways to adopt practices that support a data-driven enterprise.
Clearly defining best practices dramatically improves adoption rates without compromising data integrity. Plus, normalizing these best practices helps teams develop the mindset necessary to become more data-driven.
Know Where You’re Going Before Implementation
Many organizations think they need to start with the right tools and create a strategy after implementation. In reality, designing a roadmap for every area of BI adoption—from tool selection, to integration rollouts, to data governance and beyond—sets your enterprise up for success.
With a dedicated roadmap, you prioritize change management strategies that empower teams to develop the familiarity, competence, and confidence they need to thrive in a data-driven environment.
Starting with a data strategy vision statement helps you think of your strategy more holistically. Consider how your data goals will impact the people in your organization and what support they need to transition into a data-driven approach. How can better data management, analysis, and reporting help your teams work smarter?
Clearly defined objectives, like eliminating data silos or automating reporting, drive your strategy and must be considered before implementation. Once your vision is clearly laid out, now it’s time to design a scalable solution for managing and analyzing your data. From there, you’ll develop the right best practices to support your people and their work.
Envision a Holistic Data Strategy For Your Enterprise
Data analysts know the power of visualizing data in a new way. When you begin to take a 360-degree view of your enterprise, you will see new ways that data management and analysis help every business unit make faster, more reliable decisions.
Creating a comprehensive data strategy before implementation ensures your teams are set up with the processes and best practices they need to thrive.
Becoming a data-driven organization doesn’t happen overnight…it takes vision and planning to see the full ROI of tools like Power BI. The first step we always recommend when developing your data strategy is creating a vision.
At Collectiv, our Power BI Visioning Program helps organizations like yours define their data strategy and create an implementation roadmap to achieve their goals. Don’t just dream about becoming a data-driven enterprise—contact us today to start working toward your data goals.
