In my previous Industry Insight, I discussed how companies need to understand how to leverage the benefits of the brain as an experience simulating machine through pattern recognition, while also minimising the impact of emotional tagging in decision-making.
Companies need to understand the process of decision-making, and implement analytic solutions that guide users to make the decisions that will drive the company's behaviour. However, in order for analytic solution implementations to be successful, companies must embrace a number of factors to ensure the solutions will be adopted and effect the required organisational change.
Prior to implementing an analytics solution, companies must establish a clear link between what decisions people are required to make and how those decisions drive performance. Once they understand what decisions need to be made by the different roles, they must understand what skills are required in that role in order to execute on the tasks.
A key measure of this is to understand the link between performance and capability. To drive real performance in the company, there is a need to determine whether the people being tasked to carry out the roles have the capability to execute on them. Only once that is understood can the company define how to convert that capability into performance.
Companies have different levels of decision-making maturity. Understanding this level will help drive the manner in which the business consumes information.
Stocktaking for success
By conducting a 'decision audit' through interactions with users at different levels of the company, as well as shadowing people within certain roles, companies can assess a user's ability to handle and consume information. A decision audit would also unpack the type of decisions that users need to make on a daily basis within specific roles. Questions need to be asked about user literacy levels, complexities that exist in the roles, as well as job powers to make changes and impact the company.
A decision audit helps the company to understand the data processing maturity and the ability of users to utilise the information they are provided with in the course of decision-making. Through completion of an audit, it is possible to assess whether the company has the ability to achieve its goals based on the people within the different roles, as well as the information being provided to them to work with.
The journey a person needs to go through in understanding how to take data and convert it into wisdom is not something many people are able to understand or apply without some level of intervention.
Moving in maturity from data consumption to information utilisation, users must understand the information represented by the relationship between data and other information. In order to gain knowledge, users must understand the patterns within the information and between other sets of data. To achieve full wisdom, users should recognise that knowledge patterns arise from fundamental principles and the understanding of what those principles are.
Users that still need to be guided along the process of decision-making maturity may impede the process of implementing analytics. A way to mitigate the individual from being a key risk to positive change is to develop clear processes and routes to organisational goals that ensures success is not only linked to the individual within the role. The use of guided analytics can ensure the user's attention is drawn to the information the company finds important, and therefore provides users with clear insights into the problems faced in the company.
As an example, a sales director may need his sales team to understand which products the clients are no longer purchasing. Through guided analytics, he can illustrate which products are relevant for which client and ensure his team has sufficient information to identify up-sell and cross-sell opportunities, and influence increased sales to particular clients, based on their purchasing history.
Measure for measure
Ensuring the users within the company are provided with clear questions to ask every day provides them with a route to successful execution. Delivering reports and information to the users will allow the technology to identify where areas of opportunity exist for improvement. Measuring the performance of people within similar roles and areas, and leveraging performance management concepts through greater visibility of performance, forces the company to focus on achieving the tasks set out for it.
In undertaking a decision audit, there are three areas that need to be delved into in order to understand how information is consumed within the company.
The first is to understand the decision needs. Companies need to establish if users know what it means to succeed. What does success look like and can a company predict the range of possible outcomes?
Second is to understand the company's people. Establish upfront who are the key analytics users, and how they are currently executing reporting, as well as their technical level of competence. Delve into what information is needed to help them execute their job more efficiently, as well as whether information is a part of the social systems of the business.
A decision audit helps the company to understand the data processing maturity.
Third, the company must understand the technology. What information is relevant and is there access to the information? Is the data in a workable format? What analytics tools have been chosen for the execution of the information and does that technology enable users to more easily interact with key information?
The information gathered in a decision audit then forms the basis of an intervention to assist the company in realising value from analytics. Often, an analytics solution is provided to users and the organisation assumes the users have the ability to take on the new systems and information as well as know what needs to be done with the data. However, they often haven't been trained to bridge this gap in understanding, and they don't understand their impact on the performance of the company.
The decision audit process results in an action plan developed for each key user role within the company. It will allow them to understand their part in driving performance, as well as understanding how to utilise the technology provided. Once the user is able to clearly understand the decisions they need to make in their role, and are provided with a solution that allows them to be successful, a performance management process should be implemented that allows executives to monitor and identify success.
Users who embrace the solution and deliver greater performance need to be identified, as well as users who have below par performance.
The process of linking the people directly to the measurements that impact success is pivotal to gaining better improvement within the organisation.
When defining the need for better decision-making, companies are heavily investing in enabling their users through technology; however, they are not completing the link to performance by making the information provided relevant to their users. Enabling users to understand how they contribute to the organisation's success, even if in a very small way, is critical to gaining greater traction and support of analytics initiatives.
Companies should not underestimate the importance of helping users to understand the decisions they need to make. For analytics initiatives to be successful, people must be at the heart of the project. Ensuring they are truly empowered will provide the company with the best possible chance of success.
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