How to Improve Data Insight with Tactics and Strategy

In a perfect world we would have perfect data. But the quality, consistency, existence and accessibility of data varies a lot. Strategic and Tactical Data Analytics is an approach that maximizes short term wins and long term potential.

Where To Focus

As analysts, business intelligence managers or data professionals we know that most types of data can be obtained, organized and analyzed.  It’s a question of time, priorities and resources. Executives also have certain preferences and they expect us to deliver.

Priorities shift, new questions get asked, the business changes and previous reports and information need to be maintained.

One approach to address this is what I call using both a tactical and strategic approach in tandem. I’ve used it many times.

Strategic and Tactical Data Analytics Approach

Many people struggle to differentiate tactics and strategy.  I found the following definition on Wikipedia:

Tactics are the actual means used to gain an objective, while strategy is the overall campaign plan, which may involve complex operational patterns, activity, and decision-making that govern tactical execution.

Data Tactics

Tactical data analytic efforts are all about short-term wins. Discrete pieces of work designed to answer or shed light on a specific question.  They are fast and focused, not necessarily pretty and not necessarily perfect.

What these tactical efforts should do is demonstrate capability, spark conversation, get feedback and rapidly seek to find valuable insights. Is it useful? do the results make sense? would it be worth repeating or digging deeper?

Tactical Analytics Example

I did some work for a rapidly growing online retailer that wanted to build “data analytics”.  Fantastic. They had data in different shapes and sizes (and quality) and an IT department trying desperately to keep up with their rapid growth and all sorts of competing demands. I discussed “data analytics” with the owner. He wasn’t 100% sure what they needed and wasn’t convinced that the costs of getting it all setup would be worth it.  I tried a different tack and asked a range of questions one of which was “How many of your customers that have bought product X have bought product Y?”.  He became animated and answered “I don’t know, quite a few as the products are well suited, these will be easy sells”.

This simple question became my first focused tactical analytics project. Over the next few days (yes days…) I generated a list of customers who had bought at least one of X or Y.  A targeted email campaign led to additional sales.  Simple stuff. Amazing it didn’t already exist. The reality was it kind of did. The infrastructure just didn’t enable it for the right person at the right time.

What I didn’t do as part of this tactical effort was spend lots of time planning and building a full repeatable solution. I got raw, messy data from some hopeless reports and worked it out the hard way. I didn’t answer any other questions. Not ideal. It got the result.

The owner learned that a data analytics group would be able to answer that kind of question routinely. It would also give him the tools to answer it himself and ask more questions.

Data Strategies

Fundamentally, within the context of this discussion, data strategies are all about making the delivery of new tactical data sprints easier or enabling the automation or expansion of previous tactical work.  It’s what I like to think of as strategic builds or strategic infrastructure.

Building on the above example the key data strategy I suggested involved getting their core sales and related product information in a format and in a place that made analysis easier. This needed careful planning and thought. Data sizes were large, history was messy and future analysis relied on it.  It became a key project and it worked.

Strategic and  Tactical Data Analytics Recap

1. Make tactical efforts short, sharp and focused. Generate an answer or shed light on a specific question or problem. Test rapidly and disregard quickly if not adding value.
2. Make strategic efforts all about making tactical efforts easier or turning tactical success into something repeatable.

Change is continuous! Developing strong strategic and tactical data analytics capabilities will ensure a continued ability to generate actionable insight.