Data Strategy Health Checkup

That’s okay! Familiarizing yourself with these concepts will help you understand the importance of creating an environment where your data drives business value in your organization. Check out this blog post on the importance and benefits of a data strategy to get you started.

Take time to promote data's importance to executives and business leaders. Let them know how a data strategy can benefit them and how not having one can cost them. Compare your organization's business goals with how well data is supporting it today. How well your data is aligned to supporting your business can illustrate business objectives and technology needs, potential areas of immediate focus, and low-hanging fruit opportunities during roadmap development.

Even if you’re a chief data officer or head of analytics, you still need a cross-functional team of business leaders with a vested interest in your data strategy who will refine, sell, and ensure buy-in throughout the organization. Getting buy-in is critical, so talk to your business leaders about creating a team.

Whether you hire an external consultant or assess yourself, understanding your current data and analytic capabilities is critical. A unified understanding gets everyone on the same page and creates a homogenized view of where you are in your data and analytics journey. This is important because, coupled with an understanding of your business objectives, it lays the foundation for developing a future state your business requires.

It’s imperative that you educate your team on core concepts and best practices in data analytics—try providing a workshop to help everyone understand. Any current state assessment findings should also be reviewed at this time. When drafting a data strategy, gather your team for a workshop to define a vision, goals, metrics, primary use cases, and risks after educating them. It’s a journey. Knowing your current state (where you start) and your vision and goals (where you want to be) is critical to developing a realistic path to get there (what needs done).

Developing a detailed roadmap and timeline is key for executing your data strategy effectively. This should include an understanding of any dependencies, financials, risks and mitigation strategies, communication and change management plans, data governance rules and processes, and metrics to monitor progress. Here’s a blog post that can help you get started.