It’s not about “data”, it’s all about action the data empowers.

What is it worth? What will it cost? ...How much?!

Everywhere you turn in business, you are bombarded with stories about how “data analytics/Business Intelligence (“BI”) and “big data” is changing the way we do business. Unfortunately, they forget to tell us the what, how and why!

To keep pace, we all rush out to get our “data analytics”, with our technologists requiring new databases, integration, ETL tooling, graphical reporting interfaces and user self-serve analysis applications. Our data architects start designing, our systems teams installing new capacity for “big stuff”, and the users excitedly asking for everything! It’s no wonder that, according to Gartner Research, over half the projects fail.

In the excitement of all this cool stuff we too often forget on small key question – What actions are we looking to take when we get all this stuff? Specifically, when we generate the reports and graphs what decisions will be empowered and how will this drive to specific actions to increase revenue, decrease cost, or enable our employees to do more?

At Affari we believe data without action is merely trivia. It may be great to know about, the charts may look wonderful on our walls, but if we can not derive an action to take from this knowledge then we have not realized a return on our BI/big data investment.

Value Before Technology

The latest technology is great, but not if it doesn’t provide quantifiable value to the company! Measuring value of the analytics effort is a critical component to success.

Data Stewardship

Analytics requires data, and data requires management, planning and documentation. Best practices and standards makes the difference between success and failure.

Empowered Reporting

Having the data is only the first step. Being able to get to it easily, in a form you can consume and act immediately is the true value if analytics systems.

Extensible Design

One of the biggest challenges to an analytics model is planning to grow. Unfortunately for most implementations the response is “redesign”. Your business grows, so to should your data analytics.

Key Benefits

Is your information technology investments paying off? How do you even measure its effectiveness? Our Valuation service offering can set the direction by:

Why Valuations are Key

Start with a few key questions! The hard part is agreeing which ones are the most important to start with. Don’t try to answer every question all at once – that is one of the primary reasons for BI project failures! Rather, start with some key questions in a one area of the business. As you progress and answer those your BI effort will both show a positive return and educate your teams on new questions to answer, new areas of inquiry and new data to add to the model. Data analytics is a journey not a destination!
Unfortunately, there is no one simple answer without understanding your organization the installed applications and the types of data and questions you want answered first. The good news is that there is a wealth of great tools and databases you can apply to the need.
Data steward ship is about understanding your unique data and its context. It’s not the same as database administration (managing the technology of the databases) or data design (how we store and retrieve data) its about the context of the information and how your organization consumes and comprehends its values.
From day one our teams can be there to guiding the journey through executive management, to data discovery/design to coding to report generation. We have “been there and done that” and are here to help.

Ask An Expert

Have a question? Let us know what your issue is and we can help to change your problem into a benefit.

Contact Info

877-337-0079 info@affaricorp.com