Data-driven decision making is commonly understood by our customers as the process of extracting valuable data insights from business operations. In doing so, data has to be identified, pre-processed, ingested into appropriate databases and finally presented in a condensed and filtered manner to the end-user. Our primary tool for this is the development of data-driven dashboard solutions with Microsoft’s PowerBI which are powered by our customer’s and external data streams and our own algorithms involving statistical and machine learning techniques to provide predictive and summative insights. Such dashboards allow easy exploration and visualization of the resulting data to the end-user.
Focus on Business Value is Key
While it is easy to focus on technical aspects and challenges surrounding such dashboards, this can at times however be a distraction of focus for our customers. When we work with our clients, we instead focus on business-critical questions such as: How can we make better decisions using these dashboards in order to extract business value? Keeping this question in mind, can lead to new approaches for presenting data that emphasises quality over quantity, simplified designs and changes in how dashboards are commonly used in our client’s decision making.
Besides technical components that we help with, the implementation of a data-driven decision-making process using dashboards requires also the review and integration with organization decision making and training processes and to closely collaborate with customers to ensure that several key questions are properly addressed in this regard. Some examples include the following:
Can dashboard data insights be properly captured and understood by the end-user?
This may require team training and education or our customer’s staff, as well as user-knowledge-level adjusted dashboard design optimization – for example to favour a design that uses text to explain statistical reliability over complicated error bar graphs. It is furthermore important to implement an insight capture process for regular review of dashboard insights as the underlying business factors change. We assist in the interpretation of dashboard insights and can provide tools to end-users to understand the statistical reliability of provided machine learning predictions.
Are data insights communicated properly within the organization?
Insights require rigorous discussion and testing within your organization as well as a process that reaches all required stakeholders. Oftentimes this is a place where the value creation process is stalled since insights do not reach decision makers effectively. We can provide training in implementing this process.
Can the potential value and risk of a business decision based on data be quantified?
Before making a decision based on data-driven observation, value and risk need to be quantified. We can provide tools to enable initial estimates based on past data, but internal client knowledge is a key ingredient in this phase.
Can a hypothesis about the impact of a decision be tested in a data-driven experiment?
Given continuously updated data-streams allow for new types of real-time data-driven experiments, where decisions can first be tested at smaller scale – for example by conducting A/B testing with a small subset of customers. This can provide the required confidence to implement changes at a larger scale.
Are the effects of business decisions being continuously monitored?
Business environments change rapidly and so do the underlying factors that may have influenced past data-driven decisions. We help our clients in implementing review procedures as well as monitoring dashboards to ensure that past data-driven decisions are regularly reviewed, re-tested and improved.
The above are just some dimensions of the implementation of a data-driven decision-making process. If you are curious about improving your organization’s decision making, we are looking forward to working with you.
