Historically, when organizational managers and employees have requested BI reports, they’ve turned to IT to generate the information for them. There are a number of problems with this model—the information isn’t as current as it could be and also doesn’t allow managers and employees to dig through the information themselves so they can act quickly on emerging trends.
Empower Your Workforce
There are multiple benefits for making business data accessible to everyone. This includes faster, more accurate decision-making while instilling a culture of empowerment. But developing and nurturing an analytics-driven culture doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Tools can be purchased, but that doesn’t necessarily guarantee widespread adoption.
A good starting point for fostering an analytics-driven culture begins with having an analytics champion. It’s especially useful for this person to be a widely respected senior executive who can clearly communicate the benefits of various roles across the organization using analytics.
Although it’s not mandatory, it’s also helpful to have an analytics champion whose primary focus is as a line-of-business leader. This leader can help demonstrate how analytics can strengthen decision-making, not just for data scientists but also other leaders, accountants, HR, operations, logistics, and IT professionals.
Effectively communicating the value of using analytics is also important for capturing the interest of employees, managers, and executives in different parts of the organization.
Town hall meetings, lunch discussions, and other forums can be used to explain why the company wants to promote the use of analytics across the organization for faster, more effective decision-making.
Sharing productivity and business gains achieved through early wins—such as the time saved by a marketing team using an analytics platform to gather and combine data assets. These use cases can help secure new adoptees and further the use of analytics across the organization.
