Data into insight essentials

Businesses have access to more data than ever before, arguably to an overwhelming extent. We all want to understand more about our customers so that we can effectively engage with them, and data has the potential to unlock this insight. But insight can’t be achieved just with data alone – it is only the first step in the journey.

Forming a structured process from data to insight is essential, but often a challenge. I believe there are four reasons why often businesses struggle with insight:

1. Insight has become a jargon word

Lack of clarity on exactly what an insight is can mean that they are never truly uncovered, which often leads to gut feel or just general observations being labelled as insight. An insight should be a new discovery that unlocks future opportunities. Many businesses follow what others have done and had success with, but being the first business to identify the new opportunity reaps the most benefit.

2. Too much data and too little time

With so much data available you would expect this to naturally lead to insight. However, just analysing data doesn’t get us to insight – it is what we do with the data. Too much time can be spent reviewing and digging deeper into the data rather than adopting a process that ensures businesses get to insight in a timely manner. We all have busy lives and therefore looking for insight every time we analyse data means we can’t truly give it the time it needs. Deciding when to look for insight and when to stop at the observations can be important in making better use of our time.

3. Asking the right questions

Often the questions we are trying to answer aren’t the right ones to ask if we are looking to make new discoveries. Putting a future lens on our business questions, while still looking at the historic data, is more likely to uncover future opportunities or barriers to new growth.

4. Analysis over creativity

Analysis on its own is often going to struggle to unearth something new as we all have the same access to data. So, as well as analysis we need to be creative, asking what we think is happening. Sometimes, we just have to go with our beliefs on what we see happening and what it means. With so much data, we often want to prove everything before we drive it forward and can end up being paralysed into lack of action with our analysis.

We need to remember that coming up with new insight is more than a whizzy spreadsheet and some nice graphs. It is based on being inquisitive, creative, and sometimes living with a little bit of risk.

If your business is struggling to build future plans based on true actionable insight, contact me at [email protected] to discuss ways you can unlock your potential.

Learn the ideal process of converting reams of data into meaningful insights at our Data to Insight workshop.