CDAO Sydney 2022 was a chance for Australia’s senior executives to gather and discuss the growing strategic importance of harnessing the power of data and analytics in business. Cashrewards’ CEO and MD Bernard Wilson spoke at the event and shared five key insights on how creating a healthy organisational culture around the data and analytics function can help leaders get the most out of their data investment.
Reassessing immediate expectations
Data and analytics have been a focus for businesses across all industries for some time. Gathering valuable company and customer insights has not only empowered organisations to navigate current markets better but also to make more accurate future predictions and get ahead of new trends and competitive threats.
While there is a huge opportunity for those that harness data effectively, there is an increasing gap between the expectations of leaders and practitioners. Bernard said, “Often business leaders can have expectations of the data and analytics team without really understanding the practical implications.”
While businesses are focused on leveraging data, there are many reasons why it is not as easy as it seems. Data may be unstructured or incomplete. Data may be fragmented across tools or environments. Practitioners may be hostage to an organisation’s legacy technology. Not to mention increasing capacity and resourcing issues due to the lack of talent and an exponential increase in business asks of data teams.
To ensure data teams are set up for success, executives need to take the time to understand the current challenges of their data team, particularly as the function continues to evolve and grow rapidly. Unrealistic expectations of what’s possible in the short, medium and long-term periods lead to data teams’ disengagement and undermines the ability to generate value from data. This impacts the business’s competitive position.
Bernard said, “As with any strategy, a data strategy needs to be executable.” So, besides having a pragmatic and aligned definition of what is achievable, there are other areas of focus to ensure a business is enabling the realisation of value from data.
“Often business leaders can have expectations of the data and analytics team without really understanding the practical implications.”
- says Bernard Wilson, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Cashrewards
Elevate data and analytics
If organisations want a real return on their data and analytics investment, they need to own it as a strategic priority. This means the data function is elevated to sit alongside other business functions. Data and analytics are often seen as an exciting area or a strategic imperative but then kept siloed away from other areas of the business.
Bernard said, “Data is seen as a driver of business value, but then data isn’t in sales or marketing meetings.” From functional and executive meetings to the boardroom, data teams need the opportunity to engage in key strategic and operational discussions, share insights, ask questions and gather context. This integration is key to organisations getting the total value out of their investment.
"Problem solvers at heart, data practitioners love a challenge - so why not give them a compelling reason to help them solve?”
- Bernard Wilson, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Cashrewards
Ask for (the right) help
There are plenty of reasons to augment the data and analytics function with the expertise of external consultants or vendors. Still, this happens top-down too often, with data teams inheriting the relationship where they should be driving it. It’s essential that data teams have a voice in discussing who to work with to ensure the partnership delivers value through efficiency and mutual collaboration.
Fostering the right culture within the data and analytics team
When setting the data team up for success, fostering the right culture is crucial. In most businesses, this will involve supporting a “sub-culture” within the data and analytics team, which aligns with the broader organisational culture but is also unique to the data team.
Part of ensuring support of that culture will always be for leaders to not be prescriptive with “how” data functions operate and generate value. Data practitioners are excited by experimentation and learning new skills. The data team needs to be allowed to explore, question and innovate.
Enabling a culture that values consistent results and curiosity-led exploration is critical to empowering practitioners to do their best work and driving the most value for the organisation.
Finding the right talent
The market for data practitioners is hot. It is hotter than yesterday, and it will be even hotter tomorrow. Attracting and retaining data talent will be a key indicator of long-term business success.
Culture is key. Data practitioners will join and stay where the environment they work in is aligned with their values. In addition, acquiring the right talent requires businesses to be more open about their aspirations, including areas where it intends to leverage data. This may feel uncomfortable. Businesses may have historically kept this information confidential for fear of signalling strategic intent to competitors.
But sharing a business’s ambitions through data and analytics in the context of the wider business strategy is the only way to invite practitioners into a vision they can see themselves contributing to. Problem solvers at heart, data practitioners love a challenge - so why not give them a compelling reason to help them solve?
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