It’s time to pop the balloon on new technology just being “cool enough”! The transformative value of our cutting-edge technologies needs to be driven by demonstrating measurable improvement to the activities and efforts of the users as well as the enterprise. Big data can only be a big deal if it drives the users to take action to increase sales, decrease costs, or both.
Last week I was listening intently in a meeting with a client’s big data team as they proudly presented the final design for the new Executive Sales analytics and dashboards they had been working on for the past few months. As we progressed through screen after screen and chart after chart, each of the team members would discuss the amount of data that was behind the chart or the complexity of the multiscalar, multidimensional charts etc.. We heard about Hadoop and object relational design. There was a discussion on ETL and APIs and cloud services.
All the users and executives in the room listened intently to all of the technology excitement. With each new chart, each new drill down, the initial “oohs and aahs” subsided slowly into silence. At the end of the presentation the CIO chipperly announced that “…with this new analytics platform we are finally moving into a new age. Any questions?”
After several seconds, Tom, the VP of Sales said “This looks great, very impressive and, actually… well, very cool. But, what am I going to do with all of this?”
As the technologists looked on quizzically, he continued, “How do I make decisions from charts that take longer to decipher than the spreadsheets they are replacing. What I need to know is ‘X’ so I can do ‘Y’!”
Ahh, a light came on! The UX designer jumped up and, assuming a position at the keyboard, proceeded to spend 20 minutes instructing everyone on the art and beauty of user defined analytics and how the VP or his managers could simply click on this… then go here… then set this filter… and on it went. Eventually, with much fanfare, another beautifully crafted chart appeared.
“And that, is how you get to find ‘X’,” the Designer proudly declared. The CEO and CIO turned to Tom and waited. Finally, Tom responded with a simple question – “So… my Sales Managers are now programmers? Now, don’t get me wrong, this is all really neat and very exciting. But if they are clicking here, selecting there, and filtering this and that, then they are not doing what we pay them for – Selling!”
“Next” is actually what should have happened first! Of course, the business analysts talked with users and recorded diligently what was said. What was missed was an understanding of what happens AFTER you deliver the chart, graph, or data tables.
We can deliver the entire New York City phone book in a blink of an eye today. We can provide complex search and matching algorithms to help find the correct “Jane Smith” and, once found, can be displayed beautifully on any device with success. But is that the true value? The user looking in our phone book repository was looking for a phone number to DO SOMETHING with it.
It is the action taken on the data in our repositories that truly returns the value of our efforts. Users perceive value not by how slick our interfaces are or how fancy the graphs; Value is simply measured as, “did we make the User’s life/efforts easier? Did we facilitate some action that either increases the user’s ability to get their assigned work done or reduce the amount of time lost in “administrivia” and overhead? How can our phone app add value?” Easy – “Click here to call Jane Smith now”. After all, the vast majority of times we look up a phone number is to do what? Make a phone call of course!
According to Gartner, “Big data analytics projects don’t fail for a single reason, nor due to technology alone.” As we look to developing our “Big Data” and all of the algorithms we apply, we keep our focus on the end user and how we actually facilitate them to an action. For each output, each dashboard, the first question should be of how this information will empower or drive the user to an action that benefits their role and our organizations. If we can’t answer that question, why are we providing the “answer”?
After all – Data without Action is only Trivia!