In the world of data and analytics, technical debt is what happens when organizations make conscious decisions to solve short-term problems, even when they know there could be long-term and potentially negative implications around their actions. It exists in every organization, including yours. Not all technical debt is bad, as long as it is strategically planned and tactically paid off. Read more
When planning your next dashboard project, watch out for these 5 dashboarding terms that could possibly jeopardize its success. Read more
A recent Alexander Group survey showed 59 percent of participants reported quota setting as the top challenge among over 20 choices for their sales compensation program. Accenture research tells us that about 90 percent of companies leverage some quota-based incentives. Clearly, quota setting and management is a major focus for most sales teams. Read more
Remember our friend Empathy from the previous article? Well, now that you’ve interviewed, observed, and worked alongside your end-users and fully understand what it means to walk in their shoes, it’s time to leverage that new knowledge.
You’ve likely interviewed people in many different groups or roles within your organization. While analyzing your notes, you may begin to notice that certain people have similar needs, pain points, goals, etc. You can use this information to start persona building. Read more
Squeaky wheels usually don’t go away; they just get louder.
Imagine you purchase a new car. The car is shiny and runs great, but after a year maybe there are few things you wish were different – the seat design could be more comfortable or the road noise is louder than you expected. Maybe you just bought the standard model. Now you wish you researched a bit more or requested a few more accessories. Or maybe in reality you just need a quick tune up. Read more
In the last few weeks, I’ve spoken with three different clients who are struggling with the issue of end user adoption. Each described a routine set of activities, either completed or in process, that you would expect to see in a thoughtful change management program. Nonetheless, all three customers expressed frustration at the lack of user adoption.
Why is this? Do we need to rethink our traditional process for engaging users as we embark on our data and analytics journey?
In a word, yes. Read more
IT and business leaders share a common goal – to leverage the data available to them in order to make more informed business decisions. The first step to achieving that goal is to create a data & analytics roadmap, a task many companies find daunting. Where do you begin?
“Most organizations are ineffective in communicating data & analytics-related concepts across departments, resulting in suboptimal management and utilization of information.”
– Doug Laney, Gartner Blog Network
CIO and IDG released the 2017 State of the CIO report this week. Their findings are useful not just for the CIO role in general but also for exploring the connection between the CIO and analytics initiatives. Looking at the report through the lens of data and analytics, I had three reactions to the survey results:
- CIOs should consider using analytics to drive business innovation, backing up their transformational and strategic activities with concrete resources.
- CIOs and line of business leaders should consider communicating even more and syncing expectations through data and analytics.
- CIOs should consider investing in a data and analytics roadmap to enable themselves as both business strategists and technicians.
Creating a data and analytics roadmap is an important first step in helping your organization utilize data to achieve growth, understanding, and action. But often we hear from clients that their roadmap isn’t leading them to their desired destination. While many are successful in laying out the technical requirements, identifying the path to business outcomes, and building the right foundation, they still find themselves unable to make sufficient progress towards their goals. Read more
Analytics platform migrations and upgrades are among Ironside’s core competencies. We’ve been doing them since our inception, and we do a lot of them.
Here are four common pitfalls that we’ve seen organizations from a variety of industries suffer from during the process. Read more
Ironside helps companies translate business goals and challenges into technology solutions that enable insightful analysis, data-driven decision making and continued success. We help you structure, integrate and augment your data, while transforming your analytic environment and improving governance.