Following on from my series on Avoiding the Seven Deadly Sins of Customer Motivation I took a post-Halloween look at the “Demons” in our data, and, how we vanquish them. This follow-up article reviews how to: 1) address the common traps (“demons”) that haunt the unsuspecting professional seeking to gain and communicate accurate and actionable insights and 2) exorcise them from your business.
The idiom “the devil’s in the detail” warns of the “catch” or mysterious element hidden in the details that means things aren’t as simple as they seem. Interestingly the phrase almost certainly derives from a German proverb – “Der liebe Gott steckt” which translates as “God is in the detail.”
The challenge in 2020 isn’t whether we have metaphorically “good” or “bad” insights lurking in our data, but rather the pure volume, velocity, variety and veracity of data that stops us from seeing the relevant details and actionable insights This past year has significantly increased complexity in terms of consumer preferences, attitudes, behaviors, trends and engagements. This has led to “demons” emerging in the data that prevent actionable insights from being found.
Managing data has always been a challenge for most organisations. However, the continual shifts and evolving trends related to consumer limitations and periods of isolation has made understanding individual’s engagements and anticipating their interactions harder. However, many traditional pitfalls remain and continue to haunt businesses. These “data demons” have to first be identified and investigated before they can be understood and exorcised.
Exorcising the Demons
Many “demons” can creep into data and haunt its analysis. These can wreak havoc on the extracted intelligence and assembled stories, creating a fog of illusions and injecting an element of distrust in the insight. These demons include:
Jekyll & Hyde: Conflicting sources which create an enigma of what to believe. This is often where multiple datasets serve as indicators on a specific customer dimension, but provide conflicting and inconsistent perspectives.
Eliminating conflicting data sources of evidence are important demons to evict. Achieving this requires centralising and understanding the data sources an organisation’s teams can access. This is generally driven by data intelligence technology to inventory and integrate data sources, providing one single-source of evidence that eliminates conflicting information and allows congruency of strategies, tactics, engagements and innovations.
Understanding and being honest about a data’s source, time of collection and sampling limitations is critical. Comparing data from a loyalty-card based online panel with data from a nationally representative telephone survey isn’t comparable. Both data sets may provide relevant answers, but understanding what’s being asked, to whom and why is critical.
Skeletons: This is outdated data and obsolete intelligence with no “meat” on the bones – i.e.it provides information on irrelevant aspects of the customer journey that misinform and distract the business.
Burying the skeletons in your data intelligence requires an ongoing commitment to refreshing insight on an ongoing basis and questioning the assumptions strategies are built on and tactics are executed from. Today’s markets are complex and consumers are savvy. This creates shifts and changes with trends and tendencies. Relying on obsolete information creates a misunderstanding of the customers and their preferences. Skeletons aren’t defined by age or the timing of data collection. Old data may still have relevance. But the context of the use is king. Similarly, recognising external events’ impact before or after the data was collected is critical.
Zombies: This is mindless, unrepresentative data from irrelevant sources and small sample sizes, which convey unsubstantiated, unscientific ‘ah ha’ moments which leads to inaccurate insight.
Many of the ‘zombie’ issues with inaccurate, irrelevant data views are driven by user error. Fortunately, these can be overcome, again by technology safeguards that validate sample sizes as relevant and insights as accurate. Getting more eyes on data-driven findings prevents getting overtaken by these data ‘zombies.’ Fundamental to fighting zombies is stepping back from the data and looking at the bigger “universe” and ensuring your data is a representative slice.
Ghosts: These data gaps are your missing key intelligence segments. These vapor gaps cause issues in connecting important insights together to assemble a holistic customer profile.
‘Ghost’ gaps are usually accepted because data is usually fitted to a preconceived result. This is dangerous in itself as it’s misdirecting and results in these ghost gaps are being overlooked. This is another situation where adopting an investigative enterprise approach to data findings is critical and involving more individuals and departments in the process provides additional scrutiny on the findings.
Ghosts are like “unknown unknowns”. The best way to find and vanquish them is to sense check the data against alternative sources to find signs of missing elements. A fresh pair of eyes also helps avoid biases that creep in as users become familiar with data sets and assume they have a complete picture as they’ve subconsciously filled in the gaps using conjecture not evidence.
Vampire: The single enlightening data point that’s become obsolete, yet is desperately clung onto, ignoring the shifting customer trends and evolutions. This ends up sucking the life out of the engagement strategies’ efficacy.
This often happens when a major ‘ah-ha’ moment is uncovered. However, this goes hand-in-hand with the skeletons and requires a dedication to regularly refreshing and revisiting the data findings to identify new ‘ah-ha’ moments to drive the business forward.
There can also be a reluctance to challenge a universally accepted “truth”. However, this is the insight “vampire slayer’s” role. Wooden stakes through the heart and silver bullets whilst widely accepted as historical methods for vampire slaying are most likely fictional interpretations. The data professional must never fall into the trap of blindly accepting social norms. Challenging assumptions, looking at data afresh and robustly analysing, using proven methodologies, is essential.
Shadows: These are unorganised data ecosystems and unconnected data sources which force information to be cloaked in an organization’s inaccessible and un-useful dark corners.
This is a common demon in many organisations given the variety of data sources and the tendency for them to be siloed and fragmented. This disparate approach to datasets facilitates disorganisation and misunderstanding as to what data intelligence is even flowing within a company’s technology infrastructure. Having clear communication channels between data owners, an inventorying and auditing process of information channels and a technology platform to synthesise these ‘shadow’ datasets will help exorcise these data demons.
Mist: This is the situation of seeing what you want in the data or put another way, the manifestation of confirmation bias. In other words, too often data is molded to fit the preconceived notions and desired outcomes, which ends up wreaking havoc on what is actually happening with customers.
Eliminating the data ‘mist’ is a policy approach of following the data where it takes the business and having an intellectually honest approach to intelligence. It can be too easy to set a direction and adopt information that supports it whilst tossing intelligence that counters it. This can be incredibly damaging to an operation and also erodes the credibility of the insights themselves. So, simply having a commitment across the organisation to scrutinise and validate data-driven intelligence will dissipate these mist demons.
Shape Shifters: The data nightmare of misrepresenting information with inconsistent, inaccurate or ever changing or labeling of axes and keys, which leads to incorrect analysis and misplaced understanding of the data.
This is another demon that can be resolved with maker-checker committed discipline across the company to ensure that information is being appropriately represented and is accurate and consistent.
With the rise of “fake news” and an ever-increasing sympathy with the sentiment expressed in the quotation of “Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics” – which appears to have been first expressed in the early 1890’s, Insight and Data Professionals have a responsibility to show intelligence in a logical, clear, consistent and honest manner
Exorcising the Demons
To summarise, eliminating these demons from your data typically requires three fundamental elements from business:
- Inventorying, organizing and integrating fragmented data streams into a streamlined evidence foundation;
- Distributing this evidential insight to all corners of the organisation; and
- Adopting a cultural commitment to become data-driven by eliminating preconceived notions and predetermined decisions whilst allowing the data insights to genuinely guide decisions.
Many of the major demons haunting businesses come from the fragmented, disparate state of these siloed data sources. These datasets are isolated and provide conflicting or incorrect information. So, accounting for them all and unifying them through technology allows for these disparate demons to vanish.
Once the data sources are synthesised to provide a single source of evidence, it then needs to be distributed across the organisation. This ensures that every team, from the sales and strategy teams to the implementation and innovation groups, and every department in between is making decisions, setting strategy, designing experiences and developing innovations based on the same consistent set of intelligence.
Finally, vanquishing the data demons requires a company-wide cultural commitment to being genuinely data-driven. This means allowing the data insights to drive the direction of the business. Eliminating preconceived notions, predetermined decisions and preset strategies is key, since it allows for an honest assessment of the state of the business based on what your customers, markets and competitors are telling you. Adopting all three of these elements goes a long way to exorcising the data demons and allowing your business to become genuinely customer-centric.
