Setting up a successful big data infrastructure means investing a lot of money and manpower into making sure things get done right, which is why it would be such a shame for all those resources to go to waste. Whether you’re thinking about rolling out a big data initiative or you want to optimize your current infrastructure, it’s crucial that you implement the following five best practices in order to maximize the ROI on your reporting spend.
1.) Give Your Data to Everyone Who Needs It
Don’t keep your data in silos that only executives and board members can view- virtually all of your employees will benefit from increased access to information. Marketers need customer, web, and social data to improve their strategy, your support team needs to track customer activity patterns and response times to optimize your customers’ experience, and even your HR department can use employee data to set better programs. If you have data that will empower one of your employees to do their job better, it’s your responsibility to put the right numbers in their hands.
2.) Train Your Staff to Analyze Data Properly
The biggest mistake a business can make is not training employees to analyze and use the data they receive properly. When you’re pouring time and money into expensive software and infrastructure to collect, store, and distribute your data, it’s easy to forget that the people who will use these new tools need to be taught how. Making this mistake can actually cause more harm than good, as people are encouraged to make business decisions based off of numbers they don’t truly understand. Don’t prioritize your big data before your people. Instead, implement training programs that will ramp up your employees to use their numbers to the fullest.
3.) Visualize Your Data
If you want your data workers to improve business outcomes by changing their behaviors based on numerical trends, make those trends as easy as possible to understand. All too often companies implement expensive reporting infrastructure like databases and BI systems that do an incredible job of collecting and sorting data but fail to display it in a way that the human brain can easily comprehend. Data visualization is the key to making large, complex sets of information easy to take in; it’s the way you transform information into actionable insights.
4.) Eliminate Disparate Reports for End-Users
You’ve probably got all kinds of important data coming in from a variety of sources. Even in a single department, like sales, you might have a transactional data repository, a CRM system like salesforce.com and social selling metrics coming in from LinkedIn or Twitter. When users have to go back and forth between reports from these disparate sources, it’s difficult to get an overall view of performance. Instead you should focus on providing your users with the data from your disparate reporting tools in a single view or dashboard. This way they’ll get a holistic outlook of their business state that’s easy to analyze and use.
5.) Use Mobile Analytics to Ensure End-User Adoption
What are the devices that your end-users always have with them and use the most throughout the day? If you’re thinking about mobile phones and tablets you’re onto something. When you provide your data workers with their metrics on the devices they use most, they’re far more likely to check those metrics and use them to make decisions on a regular basis. A good mobile analytics solution is the critical top layer to ensuring that data becomes an ingrained aspect of your business culture.
Big data is a powerful tool that can yield dramatic results for your business, but implementing it also means being responsible for wielding it correctly. Learn how to make sure you distribute your data correctly by downloading our eBook below.
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