How to build a successful Data culture in your company

Nowadays, every business strives to become more data-driven – but this process doesn’t always go smoothly. It’s usually not because data or tools are lacking, but rather because data-driven behaviors aren’t established and many false beliefs concerning data usage still exist. In order to build a corporate culture that prioritizes data in decision-making, you need to inspire and encourage your teams: let’s see how it’s done!

What exactly is Data culture?

Definition

Businesses often determine the best course of action in a given context by relying on their intuition and assumptions, as well as on their own historical success record. However, nowadays they rely more and more on data.

Data culture can be defined as a set of collective principles, beliefs and behaviors shared by people who use data and encourage its use to guide and improve decision-making in the company.

Data culture is usually set up by management teams and is then strengthened and cultivated by data teams. In the end, though, Data culture is defined as the sum of each individual’s Data culture within the company.

4 pillars of a strong Data culture

To create a Data culture that generates great and sustainable results in your company, you should take these 4 concepts into consideration:

• Availability: trustworthy, quality data should be available to Business Users whenever they need it, and they should be able to know what kind of data is at their disposal.
• ‍Literacy: do Business Users know what they can do with the available data? Do they consistently understand the data that is shared with them? Can they reflect on it? If so, then well done: your team is data literate! Otherwise, they can follow a data course for beginners. ‍
• Trust: Business Users should be able to trust the data they see, and use Self-Service Analytics without doubting the data’s quality.‍
• Storytelling: Business Users are expected to include data points in their reasoning when they make decisions or promote solutions.

How to build a strong Data culture 

Data culture isn’t something you can just buy off the shelf: you have to build it piece by piece, just like your corporate culture. And it isn’t easy either: companies might encounter many roadblocks on the way. Let’s see how you can navigate them!

Tools and technical changes

Data on its own is meaningless. For it to provide useful insights and drive business outcomes, it must be made available – when possible – in the right form and at the right time. In order to achieve this, data has to stop being scattered all over the place: you need to create a streamlined pipeline to make sure that the data is available, and ensure that Business Users can trust the data.

Let’s also remember that while technology on its own may not be the main driving force when it comes to building a strong data culture, it definitely is a significant enabler. Making high-quality data available to all Business Users is actually the starting point of the whole process.

Building a product, not a service

What’s the difference between a product and a service?

• When offering a service, you do something for someone.
• When offering a product, you build something that will enable someone to do something.

If you want to build a product, you need people to access data by themselves: this is called Self-service Analytics. Dashboarding platforms often take on this role, by enabling Business Users to navigate through a defined set of dashboards and KPIs.

On the other hand, those Business Users might also be faced with more advanced topics – which calls for the assistance of data experts: building and delivering a product doesn’t mean that you can stop answering your Business Users’ questions!

A Product Manager's job is to first listen to Business Users and their needs, and then design and ship the right product features and fixes. You also need to provide your Business Users and customer support teams with documentation in order to help them handle the most advanced questions and features.

All in all, your data team should act as the Product Manager of your company’s data: this is the best way to nurture your Data culture over time.

Communication: a catalyst

You also have to work on creating meaningful cultural change in your company. This implies communicating more, about your goals as well as your expectations.

Start with the whole organization: 

• show them what can be done by generating examples;
• share and centralize these examples in a dedicated area;
• write and promote documents to help people use Self-Service Analytics.

Then, focus on Business Users:

• pick Champions (Business Users who are highly interested in this topic and will help spread the word);
• encourage Business Users to ask questions on a Slack channel or a forum.

Communication is vital when it comes to building a strong Data culture in your company: it will give all your employees literacy, trust and storytelling knowledge.

Creating a strong Data culture is a long process: Rome wasn’t built in a day! Never give up and work on overcoming all obstacles to the use of data in decision-making. Always strive to boost access to data, at all times and everywhere, so as to make every user a skillful decision-maker. 

Husprey’s Data Notebooks can help you spread Data Culture in your company!‍

Try it for free!