5 Steps to Becoming a Data-Driven Decision Maker
Step 4: Determine how to interpret the reports to generate meaningful insights.
Reports alone will not provide the answers and insights necessary to make better decisions. You need these reports visualized and contextualized to facilitate analysis. What dimensions should be used to slice the data into something meaningful? What time series should be used to present the data to unveil trends—week over week, month over month, quarter over quarter? Which metrics and KPIs should be presented together? In this step, you’re doing the critical work of making your data consumable.
Step 5: Drive the change to becoming a data-driven decision-making organization.
Getting teams to the point of analyzing the data and making data-based decisions on a regular basis will not just happen organically. Leadership has to lead in this practice and drive it down into the organization. The marketing executives have to be seen making decisions based on data in the reports. They have to lead the meetings weekly, monthly, and quarterly to review results and be agile in your road map. Of course, you will also provide the training and resources necessary to bring the team up to speed. And allow time for the organization to acclimate to these new expectations. It is a satisfying experience to attend a marketing status meeting and hear the broader team excitedly talking about changing their immediate plans based on last week’s or last month’s significant shift in a trend line.
So, start the cadence of weekly and monthly reporting. Push your teams to provide data evidence to support their claims and decisions. Model this same behavior yourself. Also, be prepared to adapt the reports to what the teams really want in order to make decisions. This regular distribution and consumption of the reports is critical to truly embedding data-driven decision making into your marketing organization.
Lastly, put numbers in your and your team’s MBOs (Management by Objectives), your quarterly and annual goals associated with any bonuses. Those numbers have to be associated with the data in reports that are readily available and credible—i.e., the team should be able to see progress against goals on a regular basis.
Guiding Principles for Data-Driven Decision Making
Data-driven decision making requires a set of guiding principles to be effective.
- The driving purpose of reporting is to enable data-driven-decisions.
- Do not succumb to ego/vanity reporting.
- Create reports that empower better decisions at the lowest levels – democratize decision-making. Check out some samples here.
- Engender an inquisitive and investigative nature in your organization.
- Leave room for exploration and discovery of patterns. Expect and encourage ad hoc reporting requests.
Next Steps
You are probably already getting results reports. So, ask yourself:
- Which of my teams are using these reports, how often, to make better decisions?
- What decisions are the reports informing?
- Are they vanity reports or reports for helping improve marketing performance?
If the reports aren’t driving any decisions or monitoring the health of a process, toss them and go to step 1 above! Audit all the reports in this way. Stop creating reports that no one uses for making decisions or confirming normal operations. Are you a 3-D organization? How did you do it? What were the biggest hurdles? Please feel free to share your experiences becoming a 3-D marketing organization and other insights on the above topics in the comments section below or email me at kevin@pedowitzgroup.com.
To learn more, please swing by and watch my presentation at the Marketing Technology Boot Camp 2017, November 28 at 4 p.m., in the Renaissance Boston Waterfront Hotel in Boston.
Kevin Joyce is CMO and vice president of strategy services with the Pedowitz Group. He holds a unique combination of marketing skills and sales experience that helps companies to bridge the gap between sales and marketing. Joyce is a marketing executive with 35 years of experience in high-tech, holding positions that include engineering, marketing, and sales. For more than 16 years, he has worked with SMBs and enterprise companies on their journeys to transform their demand generation strategies as it relates to the six key components of a successful Revenue Marketing™ engine: strategy, people, process, technology, customers, and results.