How Do You Create A Data Strategy?

Summary

This video script offers a step-by-step guide to developing a data strategy, emphasizing its importance as a valuable business asset. The speaker, an expert in data strategy, shares insights from working with various companies and introduces a four-lens approach to identify strategic data use cases. The script also provides a free data use case template to help viewers assess their business goals, challenges, and data needs, ultimately guiding them to create a tailored data strategy for their organization.

Takeaways

• 📈 Data is a valuable business asset that requires a strategic approach to maximize its potential for driving business performance.
• 🚀 The speaker has extensive experience in developing data strategies for companies of various sizes, including large corporations like Shell.
• 📚 The speaker has written an internationally best-selling book on data strategy, which is available in multiple languages.
• 🔍 Developing a data strategy begins with identifying strategic and important data use cases aligned with the business strategy.
• 👥 Four key lenses to consider are understanding customers, smarter products and services, improved operations, and data monetization.
• 🤝 Collaboration through workshops or interviews can help identify key use cases and strategic goals for data utilization.
• 📋 A data use case template is provided to help organizations systematically identify and define their strategic goals and data needs.
• 📊 Success measures should be identified to evaluate how data usage boosts business performance and addresses challenges.
• 🏢 Data governance implications, including legal requirements like GDPR, must be considered when collecting and using personal data.
• 🛠 Analytical approaches and technology requirements are crucial for turning data into actionable insights.
• 🎯 Prioritize use cases by selecting the most strategic ones and defining quick wins to demonstrate the value of the data strategy early on.
• 📘 The final step is to compile all the information into a comprehensive data strategy document, ready for implementation.

Q & A

What is the primary focus of a data strategy for a company?

The primary focus of a data strategy is to determine what data is needed and how to best use it to drive business performance, aligning with the company's overall business strategy.

Why is data considered a valuable business asset?

Data is considered a valuable business asset because it can provide insights into customer behavior, market trends, and operational efficiencies, which can be leveraged to improve business performance.

What are the four lenses through which data strategy is typically viewed?

The four lenses are understanding customers, offering smarter products and services, improving internal processes, and data monetization.

How does a company use data to understand its customers?

Companies use data to identify who their customers are, what they might buy, and to understand market trends, which helps in tailoring products and services to meet customer needs.

What is the purpose of using data to offer smarter products and services?

The purpose is to provide customers with a more customized experience, fine-tuning services to add additional value, and improve customer satisfaction and loyalty.

How can data be used to improve internal processes within a company?

Data can be used to optimize operations, enhance marketing efforts, improve manufacturing processes, and increase overall efficiency within the company.

What does data monetization entail?

Data monetization involves treating data as an asset that can be sold or rented, such as telecom companies making data available to other companies or financial services organizations packaging and selling data.

What is the recommended approach for identifying key data use cases in a company?

The recommended approach is to run a series of workshops with a cross-section of people within the company or conduct interviews with key personnel to identify key use cases across strategic lenses.

What is a data use case template and how can it be used?

A data use case template is a tool that guides users through the process of identifying strategic goals, business challenges, measures of success, data requirements, and implications for technology and skills, helping to structure the development of a data strategy.

What are 'quick wins' in the context of a data strategy?

'Quick wins' are projects that can be implemented quickly to demonstrate the value of the data strategy, helping to gain buy-in from stakeholders and show tangible results.

How can a company prioritize its data strategy use cases?

A company can prioritize its data strategy use cases by selecting the most strategic and important ones, defining quick wins, and identifying cross-cutting issues related to data requirements, governance, technology, and skills.

Outlines

00:00

📈 Developing a Data Strategy for Business Success

This paragraph introduces the importance of a data strategy in modern business, emphasizing its value as a key business asset. The speaker, having developed numerous data strategies, shares their expertise and mentions their internationally best-selling book on the subject. The focus is on understanding the strategic use of data to drive business performance. Four strategic lenses are introduced: understanding customers, offering smarter products and services, improving internal processes, and data monetization. The speaker discusses different approaches to developing a data strategy, including workshops and interviews, to identify key use cases aligned with business strategy.

05:01

📋 Crafting a Data Strategy with Use Case Templates

The speaker provides a step-by-step guide on how to develop a data strategy using a data use case template, which is available for download. The process begins with identifying strategic goals and business challenges, followed by defining measures of success and assigning owners to each use case. It involves determining the necessary data, considering data governance implications, and selecting appropriate analytics approaches. The template helps in identifying key use cases and distinguishing between strategic, long-term goals and quick wins for immediate impact. It also addresses cross-cutting issues like data requirements, governance, technology, skills development, and implementation challenges. The paragraph concludes with guidance on compiling these elements into a comprehensive data strategy document for implementation.

Keywords

💡Data Strategy

Data Strategy refers to a comprehensive plan that organizations use to leverage their data assets to achieve business objectives. In the video, it is the central theme, emphasizing the importance of a strategic approach to data utilization for driving business performance. The script mentions that the speaker has developed data strategies for various companies, including Shell, and has written a best-selling book on the subject.

💡Business Assets

Business assets are resources owned by a company that have value and can provide future benefits. In the context of the video, data is highlighted as one of the most valuable business assets, critical for strategic decision-making and business growth.

💡Data Use Cases

Data use cases are specific scenarios or applications where data is utilized to address a business challenge or opportunity. The script suggests identifying key data use cases as a starting point for developing a data strategy, which helps in understanding the strategic importance of data within an organization.

💡Strategic Lenses

Strategic lenses are perspectives or frameworks used to analyze and understand the strategic importance of data within an organization. The video outlines four lenses: understanding customers, smarter products and services, improved operations, and monetization, which guide the development of a data strategy.

💡Workshops

Workshops are interactive sessions where a group of people come together to discuss and solve problems or explore new ideas. In the script, the speaker mentions facilitating workshops with Shell to identify key data use cases, which is a collaborative approach to developing a data strategy.

💡Data Use Case Template

A data use case template is a tool or framework that guides organizations through the process of identifying and defining how they will use data to meet specific business objectives. The speaker has developed such a template to assist in the strategic development of data use cases.

💡Data Governance

Data governance involves the processes, policies, and standards that ensure the availability, usability, integrity, and security of the data used in an organization. The video script mentions considering data governance implications, such as legal requirements like GDPR, when developing a data strategy.

💡Analytics

Analytics is the process of examining data sets to draw conclusions about the information they contain. In the context of the video, analytics approaches are discussed as a means to turn data into insights that can drive business performance.

💡Implementation Challenges

Implementation challenges refer to the obstacles or difficulties that may be encountered when putting a plan or strategy into action. The script discusses identifying and addressing these challenges as part of the data strategy development process.

💡Quick Wins

Quick wins are small, achievable goals or projects that can be completed quickly and demonstrate immediate value. The video suggests defining one to three quick wins as part of a data strategy to help gain buy-in and show the benefits of the strategy.

💡Cross-cutting Issues

Cross-cutting issues are problems or considerations that affect multiple areas of an organization or project. In the video, the speaker advises identifying cross-cutting issues such as data requirements, governance, and technology needs that impact the overall data strategy.

Highlights

Develop a data strategy as it is essential for businesses to approach data strategically to drive performance.

Data has become a valuable business asset and companies need to figure out what data they need and how to best use it.

The speaker has developed data strategies for companies of all sizes, including big brands like Shell.

The speaker has written an internationally best-selling book on data strategy, translated into many languages.

Start developing a data strategy by identifying the most strategic and important data use cases in your organization.

Align data strategy with your business strategy to understand key challenges and goals.

Use data to better understand customers, offering smarter products and services, improving internal processes, and monetizing data.

Approach data strategy through four lenses: customer understanding, smarter offerings, improved operations, and monetization.

Run workshops with a cross-section of people to identify key use cases across strategic lenses.

Alternatively, conduct interviews with key people and analyze the strategy to identify important data use cases.

Use a data use case template to identify strategic goals, business challenges, measures of success, and data requirements.

Consider data governance implications, legal requirements, and analytics approaches when developing data use cases.

Identify the most strategic use cases and define quick wins to demonstrate value and gain buy-in.

Develop a data strategy template to prioritize use cases, address cross-cutting issues, and plan for implementation.

Consider data requirements, governance, technology, skills, and implementation challenges in the data strategy.

Write up the data strategy and start implementing it to develop real value from data.

Download templates and watch videos on the speaker's website and YouTube channel for more insights on data strategy.

Transcripts

in this video you will learn how to

develop a data strategy I believe that

every company in every organization now

needs a data strategy data has become

one of the most valuable and important

business assets for companies and

businesses need to approach this now

strategically to really figure out what

data they need and how they best use

their data to drive their business

performance

I have probably developed more data

strategies than anyone else in the world

from working with small and medium-sized

companies right up to big blue ship

companies and big brands like Shell I've

recently developed their data strategy

and I've also written the

internationally best-selling book on

data strategy which you can see here

which now has been translated into lots

of different languages so you can now

get this in Spanish for example or you

can get this in Chinese and I believe

has been translated into lots of other

languages including things include

languages like Turkish and even

Vietnamese so there's a lot more to dive

into if you want to go into into depth

but what I want to do in this video is

really share my experience with you and

give you a step-by-step introduction to

data strategy so you can actually take

this from here and develop a data

strategy for your organization or

understand how I would develop a data

strategy for any company

so the starting point is that we need to

figure out what are actually some of the

most strategic some of the most

important data use cases in your

organization important is that you don't

just start with how could we possibly

use data because there are endless

possibilities so for me it has to start

with your business strategy so you go

back and say what do we actually want to

achieve as a business what are some of

our key challenges and when I work with

organizations I usually look at four

different lenses that we look at the

strategic this the first lens is using

data to help you better understand your

customers they use data to understand

who your customers are what they might

buy the market trends are so anything

around understanding market

understanding customers the second lens

is then to look at offering smarter

product and smarter services to your

customers so you can use data to give

customers a more customized experience

to fine-tune services to them to add

additional value and I've written lots

of articles and lots of videos on this

channels you can on this channel you can

see on on how companies use data to

develop smarter products from companies

like Google to Amazon and others this

the third lens is to look at how you can

use data to improve your internal

processes so you use data to improve

your operations to run your business

better to do better marketing to do

they'll improve your manufacturing

processes and so on and the final lens

is to look at data from a monetization

perspective so you look at it and say

how can I actually use data as a real

asset that I could sell or rent and the

telecom companies for example I know

letting lots of data can they make this

available company's life financial

services organizations such as

MasterCard for example they're not

collecting lots of data they can now

package this and sell this to others so

those are my four lenses we look at

understanding customers smarter products

and services improved operations and

monetization and I would probably look

at this in this order so there are

different approaches when I work with

some organizations want me to just

facilitate this process and when I work

with shell for example what we do is we

run the series of workshops where we get

a cross-section of people together in a

room and I then facilitate this process

where we then identify some of the key

use cases across some of those strategic

lenses and then basically use a template

to figure out okay what are some of the

most important use cases for your

businesses for your strategy other

organizations want a slightly more

hands-off approach and I then do a

series of interviews so I interview the

key people in the organization I analyze

the strategy and then based on this I

would identify some of the key use cases

which we then define and actually to

help you do all of this what I have done

is I have developed a data use case

template so this is something I would

put the link in the bottom of my YouTube

video and you can go to my website at

Bernard mark um we can download this for

free and this takes you through this

process step by step in a really easy

easy way so you start with identifying K

what is actually my strategic goal what

does the business challenge I want to

address and he capture this once you've

done this event say okay can identify

some measures of success if I use data

to help me with this how is this

boosting performance how's this helping

me to be more successful as a business

and then you want to assign an owner to

you use case and then you say okay now

be my data customers for business this

something that the marketing team is

using is this something the operations

team is using and then you need to

figure out okay in order to do this what

data do I actually need so you then

figure out what data where this might

come from what data sources and then

youth once you've done this you don't

think about other any data governance

implications so for example are there

any legal requirements I need to watch

out for especially when you for example

collect customer data personally

identified fiber data there are laws

like gdpr that you need to take into

account and then you figure out okay how

do then turn this data into insight so

what analytics approaches do I use and

then you figure out some of the

implications around technology around

skills that you might need to develop

and some of the implementation

challenges so you use this template you

fill this out for all your key use cases

and then you basically have the starting

point for your data strategy so you

let's assume you have identified 15 use

cases for your business you then need to

figure out what are the most strategic

ones what are the most important ones

and water what are some of the

cross-cutting issues and again I have a

template then again you can download

this from my website or from the link

below and this has been via data

strategy template and what you do here

is you look at all the use cases you've

identified and you pick between one and

five depending on how big you strike how

big and ambitious you want to make your

data strategy and you say these are the

most strategic the long-term the really

important use cases but then I also

recommend that you define between one

and three

what I call quick wins where you say

okay these are project I can run pretty

quickly I can demonstrate value this

really helps buy-in when people can see

results from your data strategy and then

again you identify some of the

cross-cutting things like data

requirement so all the use cases need

different data you might need to think

about how you align all of this some

data governance requirements around all

of this some technology requirements and

might mean putting a big data warehouse

in place or data layer again what skills

you might need for your business to

implant implement the entire data

strategy which might mean up to skilling

some of your your data science teams

recruiting someone partnering with

others and then you look at some of the

implementation challenges and the

cultural challenges around this and

basically this is it

this is how you develop a data strategy

so once you have all of those all those

ingredients you can then write this up

into a data strategy and you can start

implementing it to develop real value

there's a lot more content as I said you

can use you can download the templates

from my website at Burnett mother come

and you can check out my youtube channel

where you have a lot of other videos

that talk about how businesses have

actually put their data strategy into

practice to deliver real value so

hopefully that was useful