The Last Mile Problem - Data Fluency: Empowering Your Organization with Effective Data Communication - page 3

Few people, and fewer organizations, consistently engage with the data and
use it to guide their thinking. Our vision is for everyone, from front-line cus-
tomer service agents to senior executives, to leverage the mountain of data at
their disposal. Forget the complex Wall Street trading models or IBM's Watson
computer diagnosing disease—data in your organization can and should be
used in simple, incremental ways to improve conversations, focus resources
on priorities, and make small, everyday decisions with clarity.
Making use of data is a problem common to organizations large and small,
public and private, and across market segments. According to a study con-
ducted by the consulting firm Avanade, “more than 60 percent of respondents
said their employees need to develop new skills to translate big data into
insights and business value.” 2
With all the promise that data holds, and the hope that data can help us make
more informed decisions, the big question is: What is causing the gap between
the vast opportunity of data and the reality of organizations struggling to act
on this data? Here are a few theories:
1. Many people are data phobic and unwilling to engage with data to
make decisions.
While at a leading Internet media company, we witnessed analysis teams
dutifully churning out detailed reports about how online content was
performing while the report recipients, content managers, dutifully
ignored the information. Decisions had always been made based on gut
and continued despite more and more detailed data about content usage
and users.
2. Technology and personnel limitations constrain organizations' ability
to work with their data sources.
Many organizations we encounter lament their spreadsheet-driven culture.
Every department has its own mechanism for gathering, analyzing, and
reporting on its unique data. No consistent “source of truth” exists and
data analysts become indispensable because they are the only people in
the organization who know how a financial model works, how to access
and understand the data sources, and its strengths and weaknesses. People
in these organizations wish for a technology solution that could bring all
the information together and make it available to all decision makers in
interactive, visual dashboards.