what are questions to ask before data analysis

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There are enough of cliches most data and its likeness to oil or companies being data-driven. Is in that location truth to all this hype about information strategy, predictive modeling, data visualization, and machine learning?

In our feel, these cliches are true. In the past few years, we take already helped several small and medium-sized businesses have their data and develop new products, gain invaluable insights and create new opportunities for their businesses that they didn't accept before.

Many pocket-sized and medium-sized businesses are starting to have advantage of the ease of access to cloud calculating technologies such as AWS that let your teams to perform information assay easier and anywhere using the aforementioned technology billion-dollar corporations use at a fraction of the toll.

And so what are you doing to better your business organisation information strategy today?

To help answer this question our team has put together a information strategy cess  that volition help highlight where your team is doing well and where information technology tin improve on its data strategy.

Goals Of This Data Strategy Questionnaire:

The goal of this questionnaire is to help outline what your company is doing well as far as data strategy and data assay are concerned besides as point out some places your company could improve.

So don't worry so much if you don't know every respond, also, if you desire us to walk you through this, nosotros would be happy to set up a free consultation to talk through some of these questions or some of your answers.

Data Sources And Systems

1. Do yous have a full general understanding of how to access your company'due south data?

Sometimes, you might not fifty-fifty realize that you can access data from the tertiary-parties you employ. Many modern 3rd-party systems have APIs or information extracts that tin be automated. For instance, Salesforce, Workday, and Quickbooks all have APIs that allow you to pull data hands and automatically. So this allows y'all to automate reporting in the hereafter.

2. Do you lot have multiple systems that contain your data like QuickBooks, Salesforce, Workday, or similar 3rd-parties that you lot can either access (east.yard. APIs, FTPs, databases)

At that place are thousands of third-party systems and it is difficult to list them all, just you are probably most interested in is the systems where your companies client transactions and interactions are stored. This doesn't merely mean purchase history. This could also be pages your clients visited on your site, site usage in general, customer usage of your concrete goods, emails, etc.

Data Processing, Storage, And Analytics

3. Do you currently analyze whatsoever of your data? If yes, what tools do you practice and how often do you look at them?

Many companies already use tools like Excel to analyze data. This is a bully tool and might even be enough for a pocket-size and medium-sized company. We would love to know how y'all are looking into your data to make decisions.

Also, we would break down data into three major categories, financial, operational, and customer data. And so our adjacent question is

iv. Practice you mostly analyze fiscal data or do yous also look into operational and client data?

Many companies look into financial data because information technology is usually the easiest to admission and sympathise. It is besides the core of virtually determination making.

However, it usually simply shows the output of actions and not the actual deportment that acquired them. So mayhap you have an increase in sales, but in which product line, in what surface area and what demographic, and why?

This would be a combination of financial and customer data. Being able to mesh this information together means you need to be able to admission both data sets together. This is often a pain point for many companies as this information is siloed away from each other.

That's where developing a information strategy can aid centralize your data so you lot can access information technology all together.

5. Practice yous store and or process your data in a primal location from all your various systems so you can easily meld information technology all together?

As we brought up in the previous explanation. Having a centralized data storage organization like a information warehouse tin be crucial to your companies data strategy. A data warehouse is a data storage system that allows you to hands meld information together and quickly perform ad-hoc analysis without needing to pull 10 excel extracts together every time.

half dozen. Who is responsible for your data quality, Or practise you have anyone responsible for information quality

This is kind of a pull a fast one on question. Fifty-fifty large billion-dollar corporations struggle with data quality. Many times it's considering there isn't whatsoever class of data quality guidelines fix in place. This is a key role of a data strategy every bit it ensures that the information-driven determination making is accurate. Otherwise, you might as well be guessing.

seven. Do you lot look at your data at a regular cadence or is it sporadic

Here, the respond is probably best if it is a little of both. Having a regular cadence of looking at specific metrics or sales numbers is a good program because oftentimes you might need to arrange to the ever-fluctuating market. However, you also probably want to answer ad-hoc questions at the moment. But it is much harder to answer sporadic questions if your data is in 5 different locations(going back to the data warehouse give-and-take).

eight. Has your squad created and standard metrics or key operation indicators(KPIs)

Creating metrics and KPIs is a skill all on its own. It requires an understanding of your concern driving factors equally well every bit distilling them downwards to a few key points. If a KPI or metric is besides complicated, so information technology is difficult for you as a business owner to know what actions to take.

For example, if your metric is highly abstract and requires several layers of math to get to some random percent or customer score, but you don't understand what that number means in the cease. How tin you act?

Instead, in general having a make clean metric where perchance you only divide population A overpopulation A + B or something where it a unproblematic weighted boilerplate of some kind that is very make clean and concise is far easier to understand that some complex abstruse data scientific discipline output (now there are places to put data science outputs, merely probably not in a KPI).

nine. Are there questions your team currently can't answer virtually your business that it wishes it could?

Many times we have found that businesses struggle to respond even unproblematic questions like, which customers visit what features nigh oftentimes on a site or what days practice we utilize our equipment the most. Being able to answer these questions can help pb to strategic decisions that tin can help increase revenue or reduce costs.

 10. Most importantly, practise you lot have a information analytics process?

When it comes to information analytics, having some sort of procedure or strategy as far as how you approach answering questions is key. We like to say that data analytics can become an space task. Ane question leads to some other and some other and another and before you know it, you're not fifty-fifty certain what you are trying to answer.

This is why having some low-cal structure to your analysis can help keep you on runway.

 Information Visualization And Communication

11. What advice methods do yous accept to share your information

At the end of the solar day, your data analytics strategy is not complete if yous can communicate your findings to the residual of your squad. Being able to concisely state your insights is key. This can be done through a few fundamental metrics, charts, and graphs.

12. Does your team use any grade of information visualization?

There are lots of great fancy tools out there like Tableau and Microsoft Power BI that tin can assist yous show off your information. They aren't e'er necessary but they tin be great tools that have cute UIs that can assistance captivate your audience. Captivating your audience is key in this design-driven culture nosotros live in.

People no longer have charts and graphs that aren't thoughtfully designed and impactful. This means y'all can't but spend money on a information visualization tool and promise information technology covers upwardly your ill-thought-out design. You demand to have a moment to remember about how your team will translate the results.

Data Analytical Talent

13. Practice y'all have a data analyst, information scientist, or data engineer on the payroll? If yeah, do you lot accept an onboarding document?

This department just has one question. This is considering having a information person on staff already says a lot.

It says a lot most your companies goal to be information-oriented. Having full-time data anything means you must exist asking for reporting, analytics, and metrics regularly. Regardless of the skill-ready of the individual.

The follow-up question is important considering it plays more into your companies overall data strategy. Particularly for smaller companies where there might only be one information annotator.

Having an onboarding document ensures that you lot are ready when a information analyst leaves. This onboarding document will have information most data sources, information pipelines, metrics, etc. This should deed as the bible for the information team.

Data Science And Machine Learning

14. Does your team utilise modern predictive modeling, analytics, or machine learning?

There are lots of ways these days your squad can employ car learning, data science, and predictive modeling. For instance, AWS offers various APIs to use their vision deep learning networks as well as sage maker. Now, these aren't necessarily what you volition demand, but they are cracking examples of tools you tin apply.

15. Practice you recall it could benefit from information technology?

An important question to ask in your data strategy when it comes to machine learning and all the other fancy bells and whistles is: Volition utilizing machine learning have a amend ROI compared to some simpler data analytics technique. Although there are plenty of data techniques and practices that are not as sexy as machine learning, they tin still exist much more than impactful and considerably cheaper.

We ask this question because oftentimes companies still oasis't gotten to a point where they even have like shooting fish in a barrel access to their data and notwithstanding they want to create machine learning models. There is a process in your data strategy and yous do demand to crawl earlier yous tin run.

Cloud Computing

xvi. Practise you employ whatsoever form of cloud technology to help go on your team mobile

Another primal point in your data strategy is the cloud. The cloud is a major reason why many small and medium businesses can consider a data strategy. And then our outset question commonly exercise y'all utilise the deject like AWS for anything. It allows your squad does be on the move and remote while still existence able to perform the work required.

17. Practice you lot utilize cloud technology to take advantage of scalable compute

The reason the deject has played a primal role in companies' data strategy is considering of scalable computing. You no longer need to buy a new server when y'all want to store all your data. You now tin purchase a small clamper of space on AWS or Azure and store your data and access information technology anywhere with your Tableau or Power BI workbook.

This flexibility has reduced costs without reducing the power that servers and corporate technologies provide.

Tips And Recommendations For Your Data Strategy

Data Sources And Systems

If y'all felt uncertain well-nigh your answers hither, then we recommend looking into what systems you lot employ every day that could store customer, fiscal or operational information. If you have a system that tracks data on those categories, then there may be an API that allows you to extract that information. Thus, providing you lot admission to your data.

Data Processing, Storing, And Analytics (Information Lifecycle)

One time you know what your data sources are, then you can take on your data's life cycle. If you have never idea about how your information'due south life cycle, then have a moment to map it out. Where does it come from, does it end up in Excel sheets, exercise y'all use version control or is everything kind of a mess? Also, feel free to accomplish out and nosotros would exist happy to spend 30 minutes helping y'all map information technology out.

Data Visualization and Communication

With a solid understanding of your data'southward life cycle, you can now look into working on communicating what that data says. This is where information visualization comes into play. If you want to accept this on yourself, then we recommend you read this article 10 Rules For Better Dashboard Design . Even if you aren't building a dashboard, it volition help you option improve charts and have a more than design-driven arroyo.

Machine Learning And Data Science

Alright, at present yous take a solid base data strategy. Now it is time to ramp up your information usage. If yous feel shaky on data science and machine learning then nosotros do recommend hiring a professional person similar our team or someone else. At that place are just so many pitfalls and challenges you volition face forth the mode and nosotros feel a business owner's time won't be best spent here.

Cloud Computing

If you aren't utilizing the deject and accept lots of data yous want to start storing somewhere to reply questions and or create dashboards to help bulldoze decisions, then we recommend you look into Azure, AWS, and GCP. These cloud providers allow you to reduce your information storage costs while utilizing the aforementioned servers and technologies that billion-dollar businesses do at a scaled-downwards price.

How To Plan Your Side by side Steps?

And so you accept finished the questionnaire and now y'all are wondering where to become next? We would honey to assist you forth your information journey. Our team is fabricated up of data experts who take experience building data storage systems, APIs, dashboards, and and so much more. We tin can help design, develop, and maintain your data systems without the need of hiring a  full-fourth dimension data engineer and data scientist .

Contact us today so we tin can assist outline your data strategy.

Likewise, if yous're thinking about becoming a data engineer yourself, then consider watching the video below.

How Much Do Information Engineers Make? Software Vs Data Technology Salaries

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Source: https://www.theseattledataguy.com/17-questions-you-need-to-ask-about-your-data-strategy/

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