Imagine the high dive from the point of view of a seven year old. It’s so high. It looks so fun. But at the same time, it looks incredibly scary. You want to try it so badly, yet you can’t make yourself do it. So many thoughts are racing through your head. What if I chicken out? What if it’s scary?
Does data discovery make you feel like you’re scoping out the high dive?
Setting Data Discovery up For Success
You want to dive in and find those trends and outliers that will fuel your business. But your fears or daily activities are getting in the way.
You may think to yourself that you don’t know much about statistics. You kind of know what you want to find out, but you’re not sure how to create the queries. A big software platform intimidates you. There’s just so much data. You’ve put your foot in the data water, but it’s cold—really cold. What if you get through several hours and get stuck?
It is intimidating. But just like that seven year old, when you make the dive, one of two things will happen: It will be exhilarating or it could be scary and you’ll never want to do it again.
We want to show you the exhilarating experience, not the experience that scares you away
Four Key Starting Points for Data Discovery
First, follow the diving rule: Don’t dive into water if you can’t see the bottom. Data diving without key information will prove to be very frustrating and could end up setting you back in the long run. So, you need to know a few things about the data before you dive in:
1. What are your company goals? When you have goals for your business, you automatically have questions for your data. What happens if…? What could we do if we did this? What patterns are we seeing each year?
2. What’s the depth of your data? You don’t want to dive into data that’s too shallow. What sources do you have? What gives you the most complete picture of your business? Is any silod data being overlooked?
3. Know what lies beneath. Every body of water has some big fish and some little fish. Get these people in your organization together to agree on goals for data discovery. Good data discovery starts by ensuring everyone’s on the same page. Without this initial understanding, work may end up being duplicated down the road as concerns surface.
4. Choose the right tools. Data discovery is most effective when the right tools are being used. Without predictive analytics and data visualization in your toolbox, data discovery becomes a very cumbersome process.
Want to learn more about data discovery? Try Spotfire today to get started!
