Data, data everywhere but not a drop of insight?
We’re collecting more data than ever. Having data is rarely the problem in an organization. Getting insight from data is where most organizations struggle. If this sounds familiar, the way that you’ve set up your data team may warrant a closer look.
Embedded within each business unit approach
If your analysts report to each of your business units, you’ll see that they are deeply embedded in the data. They understand what’s going on and they can make sense out of the data.
However, they are not an unbiased observer of the data. They have an allegiance to make their manager look good, especially if their manager doesn’t take well to seeing certain data that doesn’t jive with what they were expecting. Many studies have shown that you can give the same data to 10 different analysts, and you’ll get 10 different insights. Data analysis is more objective than gut based decisions, but it is not immune to bias. Most analysis requires some assumptions to be made and how you make those assumptions can completely change the story.
Analysts in this setup feel lonely. They may be the only analyst on a team of marketers or a team of sales executives. If they get stuck on a query, they have no peers to turn to. Some analysts enjoy this. Many others, don’t and eventually feel they can no longer learn or grow in such an environment and leave.
Bottom line- you get deep subject matter expertise but not unbiased, pragmatic, truth telling analysis.
Center of Excellence Approach
In the Center of Excellence model, the team of analysts are all on the same team reporting to a data analytics expert who can serve as their manager and technical mentor.
The Head of the Center of Excellence triages various analytics needs to her/his team based on availability and skillset. Often in this setup, the analyst is not invited to all of the meetings at that the business units have and find themselves unable to answer questions of ‘why’ is the data what it is and ‘so what’ do we do about it.
Ultimately, you get a lot of dashboards and numbers but not a lot of insights. Example: you may get a beautiful dashboard of blog performance with no mention of why are certain posts doing well or a strategy for how to grow that type of content.
So what’s the ideal solution?
A hybrid of the two approaches works best. Have analysts on their own team (Center of Excellence approach) with a dotted line to a specific business unit. In this setup, you may have a Head of Analytics who has 3 analysts reporting to them, one with a dotted line to the Head of Marketing, another with a dotted line to the Head of Sales and another with a dotted line to the Head of Customer Success.
Dotted line reporting structures can be tricky to manage. You want to make clear with your department heads what the expectations of this arrangement are. Namely, you want to make sure that each analyst is invited to all team meetings, retreats and has direct access to all staff on the team they are assigned to. You also want to make sure that the analyst's annual review/promotion prospects are not controlled by their dotted line boss, but rather by the Head of Analytics.
While this is not fool proof, it will get you the closest to having unbiased, actionable insights from your data.
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