Does your data have a purpose?

Ask yourself this question, does your data have a purpose? If not, you’re probably stuck in some sort of holding pattern. Data analytics has been transforming organizations, helping leaders manage their team performance, analyze customer retention, operate and give insights into numbers never thought possible. 

The companies that are really reaping the benefits of data analytics are those that have defined the purpose of their data. If you cannot identify your data’s purpose you cannot translate that into actionable tasks. This purpose needs to be identified throughout all areas of an organization that can benefit from data – from IT to executives, to HR, sales and operations. 

To help identify your data’s purpose begin with these steps:

Ask the right questions and ask with clarity – ask questions that drill down below the surface like, “How can we improve our department’s performance?” Find out where the value is and ask the question. Try doing this as an exercise with your department or at an executive level. Sometimes we get ahead of ourselves and collect every piece of data there is to be had when if we had just defined what we were looking for upfront it would have made things clearer. 

Go big or go home? Don’t listen to that nonsense! – To sustain competitive advantage you can’t jump in with both feet at once, rather you need to focus on marginal gains. Focus on areas one at a time that can be improved – committing to one change at a time is a very powerful concept. 

Create usable outputs – Insights become clear when data becomes visual. When data comes alive as a visual that is where true power lies. You can begin to connect the dots and see data that is associated and data that is irrelevant to the question the visual produced. Let’s face it, appearances matter and that’s why Qlik Sense is one of the top BI solutions; because it has such tremendous capabilities with its visualizations. 

Once you can identify the purpose of your data you can unlock the story it has to tell. 

Tell your story with Qlik Sense.