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Translating your data from information to insight helps you understand cause and effect and drive effective decisions. But insight alone doesn’t help you take the actions it inspires. How do you use your data to facilitate the transformation of your performance?
Only 29% of firms are good at connecting analytics to action, according to research by Forrester.
Many business owners are left frustrated after investing in data intelligence only to find it doesn’t drive the performance they felt they were promised.
Jessica, the Head of Division at an advisory agency, was frustrated that staff weren’t recruiting their members to the annual events. She knew attendance was the strongest indicator of membership renewal probability. Events represented a virtuous circle; the more participants there were, the richer the discussions, the greater the member value and therefore the renewal likelihood. Jessica had never seen such poor recruitment rates, if they didn’t improve, she knew there would be a subsequent financial targets battle to face.
HQ had rolled out software that tracked the automated invite process. It produced endless graphs and data points to visualise this information for the business. Staff could access insight about their members, where they were in relation to others and where they needed to be. Part of staff bonus plans was also linked to meeting recruitment.
Jessica was perplexed; why were the rates so poor?
Data is unprocessed measured or observed characteristics or facts, usually in numerical or text form. Data is usually collected and stored in computer-based databases.
Information is when data is viewed in context; it’s data that is processed for human consumption. We see data in the form of information on our weekly reports.
Insight is understanding and drawing conclusions for action; it’s analysed information that drive decisions.
My phone tells me it’s going to be 13°c tomorrow; that’s data. It also has a picture of a cloud with a sun behind it and an umbrella symbol saying 50% chance of rain, that’s information. It informs me tomorrow will be 2°c colder than today, that’s insight. I know I’ll need a warmer jumper and an umbrella wouldn’t be a bad idea.
Insight is audience dependent.
All of us recognise data and information; insight is a little trickier.
If I didn’t have a husky to walk, maybe I wouldn’t have been outside today and the fact that it was going to be 2°c colder wouldn’t mean much to me.
Insight is understanding or perceiving what the information means in the context you are in. The word insight literally means seeing inward, it comes from the prefix in- and the word sight.
Insight may cause a Eureka moment for one person but bewilder another. As with beauty, it’s in the eye of the beholder. It depends on perception, past experience, understanding and context. If they don’t align, it’s just information.
They had data, information, and insight.
The invitation software held all the data. Management could view what proportion of clients had accepted and declined, how this number was changing and what the maximum capacity would be based on unanswered invites. The invitation templates and event agendas were held on the company database. Staff could see how they were performing against company average and how many more recruits they would need to get to their targets. They knew what to do, how to do it and had the motivation to do so.
This year was different to previous years. The company had gone through a restructure, designed to put the customer at the centre. Staff were aligned by account where they had previously been aligned by product. Previously staff had one major event to invite their clients to. Now they were facing up to 13 different event dates and topic agendas. They still had the event information and insight about event recruitment status, but the data wasn’t mobilising recruitment.
Facilitation makes it easier, faster or simpler to take action.
Data can inform you, as information. Data can drive your decisions, as insight. Collated or presented in the right way, data can also facilitate the actions required resulting from your decisions.
In our weather example, the temperature was the data, the context of the cloudy day and the chance of rain was the information and that it was going to be 2°c colder was the insight. I planned on wearing a warmer jumper and taking an umbrella. Data facilitation would be my phone alerting me as I picked up Akira’s (my husky) lead and headed out the door - ping ‘have you remembered your umbrella?’
Facilitation helps you take the action the insight, enabled you to decide on taking.
A friend has the word ‘keys’ on the inside of her front door. Facilitation reminds or helps you at the right time to take the action you intended to take. Or in my friend’s case the action she wants her children and husband to take.
It is a timely prompt to enable actions.
The insight helps you decide what needs to be done, facilitation helps you, or others, to do it. The key to good facilitation is understanding when is the right time and what action you need to enable.
You can mobilise the right actions by copying what is already working. Marshal your troops by making it easier for everyone to replicate good actions and clarifying how those actions lead to improved results. Find the exception and clone the actions, rather than focusing on how bad the numbers are.
Not everyone’s rates were bad, in the case of our meeting recruiters. The high performers were planning. They looked through their call schedules for the week and looked up the recruitment status of each customer they were due to talk to. They had event topic and agenda print outs, along with the pitch provided by HQ. As their phone calls took place, they knew what event to discuss.
In contrast, the poor performers, remarked that it was impossible to remember which customer was invited to what and it was easier to let their assistant call through to PAs to get the customer recruited.
We identified 2 things that were working well
The high performers had prepared themselves for each call, changing that behaviour across everyone would be possible, but hard and inevitably take time. But we could easily replicate the two factors that were facilitating the good performers.
What's working well in your organisation?
Matching data from staff calendars and the recruitment database provided the information on who was and wasn’t recruited. A simple spreadsheet listing client, call date and recruitment status sent out once a week that could be kept on desktops or printed out.
We produced a simple PowerPoint deck that laid out the meeting topics; dates; those already attending and the pitch. The deck included hyperlinks back to the information on the system but also could be used offline. Both documents could be updated by the office admin and circulated each week. With no preparation, staff could recite the invite pitch.
The team landed at 98% meeting penetration (98 out of 100 clients attended at least one event) well over their 85% target.
Our dashboards will tell us roughly the same story; achieve more of X or less of Y to grow your business or further your mission. The details will of course be specific to the business it is measuring and the environment it is in. If your dashboard is telling you to do something more, seek out examples of someone that is already doing it more. Understand the actions that are causing the desired result. Once you have identified the actions make it ridiculously easy for others to replicate.
Are some of your retail staff better at collecting customer emails? What are they doing differently? If they are outlining the benefits of the loyalty scheme, then give all your staff access to flyers that outline the benefits.
Do some of your staff get fewer customer complaints? What are they doing differently? If they are double checking orders before they go out, can you provide a checklist for all staff to go through?
Are some of your staff faster at processing orders? What are they doing differently? If they are doing process steps in a different order, can you share a new protocol?
By focusing on what good looks like and making it easy to replicate you’ll see more of what you want to see. Often the solutions are very simple and low cost but can have a dramatic impact.
The solution for Jessica had an ongoing cost of an hour of her office assistants time per week. That was it. An insignificant cost compared to the renewal price of a membership.
We are all wired to focus on bad news, problems or negativity. Known in psychology as the negativity bias, it's believed to have developed from the days when we had to scan our environments for dangerous threats. By refocusing on good and replicating it you can enable all your staff to take positive actions to improve your businesses performance.
Make it ridiculously easy for insight to translate to positive action and your finally reap the benefits of the insight you have invested in.
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