Democratizing Analytics

Chapter 4. Best Practices for Analytics Democratization

The journey to democratizing analytics and advancing your organization’s analytics maturity is both challenging and rewarding. You may encounter one or more of the following trials along the way:¹

Data quality

Many organizations have an overwhelming amount of data. That data is typically decentralized, low in quality, and prohibitive to connect to. As such, when blending in additional data sets or producing insights, some doubt may be cast on the accuracy of the results.

Enterprise adoption

Analytics democratization aims to drive adoption throughout the organization. This means that buy-in is needed from analysts, managers, leaders, employees, customers, shareholders, and more. It’s challenging to create a shared desire across so many constituencies to understand and utilize data and analytics to make analytics-informed decisions in the business.

Leadership support

For a democratization effort to gain traction, the leadership of the company must understand the benefits and be supportive of the initiative. It needs to understand that analytics democratization is not opening the organization to vulnerability but rather providing valuable insights into—and improving—organizational processes. The involvement of leaders ensures that the move toward democratization is strategic and, importantly, funded.

Technology

Shifting to an analytically-driven organization requires the right technology. When democratizing analytics, ...