Talking data without using the word data!

Bonamy Waddell, Data Storyteller, Bon Insight

It seems many people aren’t keen on the word data. It can sound so boring – but it’s not! And to prove it, I thought I’d write about data without using the word data itself! (I’ve said it 3 times already – that’ll do!).

So – I want you to have a think about your business processes for a moment. Pick a couple of reports that get shared with clients, or an update that goes out internally every

fortnight. Now ask, why do those reports exist? What insight do they deliver? I wonder how often the reply might be “I’m not sure, we’ve just always done it like this.”

Now let’s flip it the other way and start with – what information is required for me or my team to make business decisions? What is useful for my client to hear in their monthly update? It then shifts because it’s not just process for process-sake. You’re really adding value to your team, your Board, your clients.

So how and where do I gather that intelligence, I hear you ask? Here are two ideas to get you started:

1.Carry out an audit

Understand what intelligence already exists. This might include (but is not restricted to, by any means!):

a. Client intelligence: via client satisfaction surveys, as well as your CRM database – easy to extract to measure conversion rates, length of client relationship, sector / service breakdown, geographic location, and beyond – who owns this in your organisation?

b. Marketing: campaign performance, social channel analytics, event attendance to name a few;

c. Employee information: recruitment / retention rates, performance management, Glassdoor reviews, and beyond;

d. Financials: leave the heavy lifting to the Finance team (!), but what sales trends can be aligned with marketing activities, for example.

2. Fill your gaps

Doing the audit means you know what you know, but what don’t you know?! Playing the above 4 areas back, we might see that:

a. Clients: are you completing regular client satisfaction surveys and really listening to them? Does your CRM track all fields – what sectors are you heavy / light in? Is there a gap in the size of organisation you work with? Do you record new business win/loss debriefs? If you’re not gathering it, you can’t learn from it!

b. Marketing: taking an event as an example, do you have a pre-event survey to understand what attendees want to get from it? And a post-event to assess how it all went? This will shape your future events and set a benchmark;

c. Employees: do you carry out regular pulse checks to measure employee wellbeing? Are you capturing the reasons people leave? Do you keep Glassdoor updated, and how does that compare to your competitors?

d. Financial: again, this isn’t about the financial nitty-gritty, but sales trends and how that maps to performance from the rest of the organisation, for example.

The point is this – using the business intelligence (I could have used the ‘d’ word here…!) that we already own, alongside knowing what we need to gather, gives us confidence. And we all want that! It underpins all areas of our decision-making. It gives you an answer to the question, “Why are you doing x, y, z?” – because the answer is the evidence you have gathered which will inform your next decision.

Eh voila! Talking data without saying data. You’re welcome!

www.boninsight.com