Data-Driven Organisations Must Bridge the Knowledge Gap
- By Mark Velthuis, Amplitude
- August 01, 2023
When a team is data-driven, they have the exact information they need to make key decisions — and this ability unlocks massive potential for growth across an organization. APAC leaders are well aware of the power of data in driving business outcomes, with regional spending on big data analytics solutions expected to reach USD42.2 billion by 2023. But no amount of spending is enough if you don't have a data-driven culture across your technical and non-technical teams.
Traditionally, only data scientists and engineers had the technical skills to analyze data, but this is no longer sustainable for companies looking to prioritize product investments and drive growth. As the data landscape continues to evolve, companies will have a much harder time creating a data-led culture if they cannot find a way to bring their teams—regardless of technical acumen—together.
There’s no silver bullet to creating a data-led culture. Fortunately, there are some steps that organisations can take in order to bridge the technical and non-technical divide, and ultimately make good on their goal to become a data-driven business.
Cultivate a culture of learning
The first step is data education. Sales, marketing, and other traditionally non-technical teams aren't going to become data analysts overnight. Leaders need to offer the right resources and training to help everyone in the organization be data literate – or risk being left behind. By 2023, Gartner predicts data literacy to become essential in driving business value.
Data literacy is about more than just understanding the data itself – employees need to recognize why data is now relevant to their traditionally non-technical roles. They also need to feel confident in digesting and evaluating data, and comfortable in making data-driven decisions. Traditionally non-technical teams already have the soft skills needed, like creative and critical thinking, intellectual curiosity, and communication. They now need to learn how to intersect data into their existing skill sets.
This is where training and resources come in. Beyond initial training and hands-on data use, organisations should launch weekly office hours where anyone can drop in and ask data-related questions. This gives teams an opportunity to start conversations, ask second and third questions, and get more invested in the data decision-making process itself. Of equal importance, leaders need to invest in enablement and self-serve, accessible data tools to ensure that their education efforts take hold. Trainings are only helpful if people can quickly put what they learned into action.
Utilize user-friendly tools
The saying “a worker is only as good as their tools,” rings true. For non-technical teams who have little to no experience pulling and interpreting data, the right tools are essential for their success. To become a data-driven organization, teams should have access to tools that help them collect, store, and move data, derive insights from that data, and take action on those insights. But, according to research, only 60% of employees think their companies distribute free access to data and analytics equally – despite 97% of industry leaders believing that company-wide access to data is essential to success. Employees cannot be expected to confidently understand and work with data if a business gatekeeps the tools they require, and businesses cannot become data-driven if equitable access to data is not granted.
But not just any analytics tool will do. Non-technical teams need self-serve tools to help them leverage data independently, easily, and efficiently, without writing a single line of code. And this doesn’t mean self-serve data tools don’t have deep analysis power. In fact, many low- or no-code data tools can be the best bridge between technical and non-technical teams because they meet the needs of both of them.
Once you have everyone speaking the same language about your data, you can make data-driven decisions faster. This empowers teams to identify and fix business problems faster, react swiftly to customer requests, and test the impact of new strategies in a scalable manner.
Investing in an intermediary team
Data democratization is not a destination, but a journey that never truly ends. Organisations will always have new team members joining, priorities shifting, and customer needs evolving. To make this process easier for both companies and individuals, businesses should consider creating a bridge team that evangelizes the importance of data, aids in continued education, and is a liaison between non-technical and technical employees. Bridge teams can create repositories for common questions, set up data literacy activities, and help teams understand how their existing workflows can be improved or informed by data.
In times of financial uncertainty, businesses may be apprehensive to invest in a bridge team, especially since low-code and no-code platforms prove effective in facilitating data literacy. But bridge teams possess the one benefit that a software platform doesn’t – human understanding. By helping to connect the gap and facilitate conversations between data and non-data people, bridge teams alleviate pressure surrounding data democratization and serve as an asset to the leadership team who seek ongoing progress updates. A bridge team is crucial to ensuring that data is not only accessible across the entire organization, but that its use can be impactful for the business as a whole.
In today’s business landscape, the ability to work with data has become essential for all employees, regardless of role. By 2025, 80% of global data analytics initiatives that are focused on business outcomes will be considered an essential business capability. Companies in APAC that embrace and encourage data literacy and take active steps to bridge the gap between data and non-data teams have a significant competitive advantage. By empowering employees through education, utilizing the most appropriate and effective tools for their knowledge levels, and implementing a bridge team, companies can ease the transition to a data-driven business model and support new growth.
Mark Velthuis, vice president of Sales for the Asia Pacific and Japan at Amplitude, wrote this article. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of CDOTrends.
Image credit: iStockphoto/fongleon356