This year marks 20 years since I started my career. One of my earliest memories was my manager, now good friend, handing me a book to learn SQL coding in 24 hours and I never looked back. What I loved about coding was hitting the RUN button and getting answers to question I had formulated working side-by-side with my colleagues. Streamlining and optimizing code was satisfying, but for me the joy was in being able to help and guide others.
Along the way I have been fortunate to work with and learn from truly innovative and great people. I want to mark this milestone by sharing what I feel are the key things I have learned along the way. Although our journeys are different, I bet some of these resonate with you and are part of a common thread within our community.
Don’t be everything to everybody: Now, it’s not to say as leaders we don’t want to take initiative and be as helpful as we can across the organization but we are also in a unique position to unlock value with our data and analytics capabilities. Somebody once said to me its easy to say “No” to something if you know what you are saying “Yes” to; words I live by. What this means to me is now more than ever it’s imperative to have a vision and strategy on how you and your team are delivering value. Making the shift from order taker to strategically thinking about how you are delivering value will absolutely help make your choices easier and align people to support your efforts.
Challenging the status quo is a good thing: There is no doubt big data, computing power, AI/ML and digital transformation have changed the paradigm of the how businesses leverage data and build new experiences to compete in an ever-changing landscape. With that shift comes the need for us to continuously evaluate how our environment is shifting. It’s critical we build connections to our partners, industry thought leaders, competitive intelligence streams, and network to be able to build and maintain a point of view on how we are helping to increase competitiveness with data and analytics.
There is no end state, but there is a data value chain: Have you ever Googled for an industry view of all the players in marketing tech or analytics ecosystems? It’s absolutely overwhelming and guess what? There will continue to be an overwhelming number of vendors, products and services in the future. When you think about this, I suggest you start by making sure you are getting as much as you can out of the capabilities you have today but there will be a time when you need to re-evaluate. I’ve always found the key to navigating these endless possibilities is to have an understanding of your data value chain; how you move from new uses cases to delivering value generating outcomes as fast as possible. Key elements such as data sources, analytics tools, CRM platforms, KPIs, are joined together to provide a baseline view into key metrics such as time to implement new use cases, cost to develop, and the scale of resources needed. It is only by having this conceptual view that you can effectively evaluate the new tools, data, and capabilities you will be presented with and understand how they ‘plug-in’ to help accelerate, close gaps and reduce pain points.
It’s still true…. communicate, communicate, communicate: I’ll admit that as a member and leader of analytics teams I have, at times, been happy to simply take orders, be the generator of success for others and not toot the horn of the team. It wasn’t until I started to take some guidance from my Marketing friends and established better communication strategies like interconnects, feedback surveys, request forms, results & planning meetings, did I unlock the true value of my teams potential. To build momentum, it all starts with being transparent, seeking input on the value being generated and taking the initiative to develop quick wins that build towards a longer strategy.
You’ll need help, so make friends: As you start to focus your efforts, look for areas to challenge the status quo, and communicate more effectively you’ll need to have friends to help you on your way. Good relationships are built on trust and building trust comes from creating and delivering opportunities together. Whether it’s a relationship with your IT or Finance partner, the key is to bring them in and work together so it becomes about sharing the success and not about a checkmark on the To-Do list.
For those of you I have worked, collaborated and shared time with over these 20 years thank you for being a part of my journey.
Jer
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