Effectively aligning your data strategy with the business will help enhance your company’s bottom line. But as data leaders know, this is easier said than done. For example, your team might have conducted some heroic data analysis and developed key insights that have the potential to unlock new business revenue opportunities. But what if your team struggles to convince business leaders to take action? The importance of training your data team to effectively partner and communicate with stakeholders is a critical component for successful data alignment with the business.
At our August Modal Customer & Advisory Board Member Roundtable, data & analytics leaders shared what’s worked (and what hasn’t) when it comes to aligning their data strategy with the business. Competing priorities, executive misunderstanding of the data, unclear goals, and the need for expectation management are some of the key challenges that surfaced in our discussion.
Here is a recap of 4 ways data leaders are overcoming these challenges and building a successful data strategy that drives the business.
Data leaders agreed it’s important to do the data strategy alignment work upfront and really understand what line of business leaders want to get out of the data in the first place. “You’ll get the biggest payback if you make sure business leaders and consumers of your data are part of defining the requirements upfront. Spend the time aligning and overcoming competing priorities. Streamline these conflicting goals by agreeing on a set of common priorities,” shared Tracey Koller, currently an executive at Walgreens and formerly at Target and Party City.
For example, Angie Schulke, VP of Application Development, Data & Analytics at Life Time starts by asking stakeholders “What action will you take if you have this data?"
Angie also puts herself in her customers’ shoes whether it’s working alongside team members in Life Time’s athletic country clubs, conducting listening sessions, or enjoying the experiences as a member herself. “I recently had a Life Time club leader walk me through how she uses data every day to make decisions. Seeing it from her perspective helped me understand how we could enhance our data and reporting solutions to make it much easier for her to gain these insights.”
Some organizations also formalize the process through a Data Alignment Task Force that meets regularly to ensure their data strategy is aligned with business priorities and organizational culture.
A successful alignment of your data strategy with the business is also 360 degrees. Modal Roundtable data leaders discussed how it’s essential to ensure your priorities are aligned across all applications and diverse data sources when you build a new analytics platform. If your priorities aren’t aligned end to end from the data source to the end-user, you’ll encounter challenges downstream. Other Modal Roundtable data leaders cautioned that it’s not enough to just align your data strategy with the C-Suite at the top, you’ll also need to ensure your mid-level working team is onboard as well – otherwise, you’ll fall short when it comes to tactical execution. For example, frequent biweekly meetings with your executing team are critical to keep short-term goals aligned when introducing a new data initiative.
Modal Roundtable data leaders also strongly emphasized the importance of training at every level as well as training during both pre- and post-rollout of a new data initiative.
“When we rolled out a new integrated analytic tool, we thought we had done enough comprehensive training before roll-out. We had formal ‘super user’ data champions and ‘train the trainer’ programs. We collaborated with HR and built a change enablement plan. But we overlooked post-roll-out training. Despite having super users, once the data was out in the wild and you’re trying to run a business, so many questions came up that we didn’t anticipate,” said Tracey Koller. “I now advise what I call ‘hyper care’ post-rollout which includes daily stand-ups and on-the-job training.”
Finally, the last but critical part of a successful data alignment strategy is making sure your data teams build the right narrative around the data and inspire action. Otherwise, your leaders won’t take action and your data will fail to impact the business.
Unfortunately, data teams tend to dedicate hours developing the insights, but then rush this last important step. So how can you train data teams to flex this important data storytelling muscle?
Michael Gill – formerly Vice President & Chief Data Analytics Officer at Employer Holdings, Inc. and Global Head of Data & Analytics at Nike–shared: “We always make both our data and business teams write a joint press release. It’s a great exercise to help people imagine what the impact will be. We ask them: Three years from now after the new product, dashboard, or analytics tool is released, what accomplishments do you think will have happened as a result of it being used? In other words, what is the "end story"? We found this exercise helps demystify the complexity of data and helps people see its value, especially on the business side. Once you draft this hypothetical end story, you can start to work backward to determine what needs to be done to make that story real.”
Partner with Modal to train your data teams to drive business impact
Modal’s unique cohort-based hands-on learning combined with 1:1 coaching can upskill your data teams and help drive data alignment with the business.
Modal’s training results in 10x higher engagement with 75% of Modal graduates applying their skills within two weeks. For more information about Modal, request a demo here.
