The Data Deity, Challenging False Gods.

Let’s talk about data analytics, and the so-called “God of data”. Data collection tools like Google Analytics, Marketo, and Salesforce matched with BI tools like Looker, and Tableau creates a plethora of data and powerful ways to view it. But what does it really do for us? Does it drive marketing success or just create more problems? A client provided Google Analytics data to me as part of a strategic planning effort. I took the data to finance and asked them to reconcile it to sales revenue. I also asked the sales operations team to reconcile it to their Salesforce data. Yes, you guessed it, there was a high level of reconciliation error. When I asked the marketing team to challenge their belief in the Google Analytics data it was considered blasphemy. It’s not that Salesforce or Google Analytics provided wrong information it was just different information, one part of a complete story. Each data source analyzed on its own provided one viewpoint of the business. The data was in silos and not collected in alignment with the business strategy. The data collection we have today gives us a lot of information about customers and their behavior, allowing you to better target your efforts. To use data effectively it needs to be integrated and aligned with your business strategy. This is especially true in Omnichannel Sales where your sales and marketing data collection is segregated or non-uniform over multiple channels. The takeaway here is simple, the vast array of data available to your business is valuable. However, it is only valuable if you test it against your business strategy by asking What? Where? When? Why? and Who? questions. What was being measured? Where was the measurement taken? When did the measurement occur? Why is this data important to our business strategy? Who can collaborate the data? (Human intel) Build a holistic data strategy, aligned with your business strategy avoiding data silos. Don’t fall into the trap of worshipping this false God of Data – instead, trust yourself and make sure you focus on what really matters. Creating strong relationships with customers and understanding their needs. In the end, that’s the only way to guarantee success. That’s all I have for now – thank you for taking the time to listen. Until next time!