{"id":1096,"date":"2020-06-12T17:24:41","date_gmt":"2020-06-12T17:24:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/?p=1096"},"modified":"2020-06-12T17:24:48","modified_gmt":"2020-06-12T17:24:48","slug":"its-not-about-data-its-about-actionable-insights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/2020\/06\/12\/its-not-about-data-its-about-actionable-insights\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s not about data; it\u2019s about actionable insights"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Photo by F\u00e1bio Lucas on Unsplash<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This week, I had an interesting discussion about data with the CEO of one of the startups I work with. The challenge is that many companies are collecting vast amounts of data, storing it and then leaving it as an unused asset. It surprises me that so many companies are maintaining such amazingly large data stores without finding good ways of using them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The key underlying reason, in my opinion, is that collecting data is \neasy, but generating actionable insights out of it is hard. It requires a\n deep understanding of the domain, as well as insight into what provides\n value within the domain\u2019s context. This calls for a mindset different \nfrom the one present at most companies, where the focus often is on \ndoing what we\u2019ve always done, but a little bit better or faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company of the CEO I talked to operates in the media domain and \nhas reached a point where key employees of its customers receive a daily\n email listing the highest-priority tasks that they should focus their \nenergy on that day. These tasks are identified by collecting data from \nthe relevant media properties of the customer, analyzing this data to \nidentify deviations and anomalies and then recommending the most likely \nmitigation actions that will address the identified concerns. These \nmitigation actions are the tasks that the key employees receive in their\n daily to-do list. To me, this is the hallmark of being a data-driven \ncompany: it\u2019s not about the data, but about generating actionable \ninsights from the data that you can use to your advantage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, in this case, the insights are generated based on the \ncustomer\u2019s own data. The next step is to get some or all of the \ncustomers to agree to anonymously share their data with the company. \nThis allows the company to compare each customer to all the others, \nwhich allows for the next level of insights to be generated. Now, it\u2019s \nnot just deviations and anomalies identified within your own scope, but \nalso those identified through comparison with others. By comparing your \nperformance with others in the same industry, it\u2019s much easier to gain \ninsight into where energy should be invested to improve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In many industries, there are mechanisms in place for companies to \ncompare themselves to others. However, these mechanisms tend to be \nmanual and often run infrequently. The typical example is the yearly \nemployee survey where companies compare their employee engagement score \nwith others in the same industry. Here, we\u2019re talking about continuous, \nquantitative and fully automatically generated insights that give you \ndaily input on where to spend your time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Concluding, to be a data-driven company is not about having lots of data. It\u2019s about generating valuable and actionable insights from that data continuously and using those to generate, preferably automatically, the actions for your team that will have the most impact. It\u2019s not<\/em> about the data; it\u2019s about what you do with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To get more insights earlier, sign up for my newsletter at <\/em>jan@janbosch.com<\/em><\/a> or follow me on<\/em> janbosch.com\/blog<\/em><\/a>, LinkedIn (<\/em>linkedin.com\/in\/janbosch<\/em><\/a>) or Twitter (<\/em>@JanBosch<\/em><\/a>).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week, I had an interesting discussion about data with the CEO of one of the startups I work with. The challenge is that many companies are collecting vast amounts of data, storing it and then leaving it as an unused asset. It surprises me that so many companies are maintaining such amazingly large data … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1096"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1096"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1098,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1096\/revisions\/1098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}