Even with the proliferation of data within companies, the vast majority of data collected and created isn’t used to improve the business, react quickly to issues, or uncover trends. Dashboards, scorecards, and KPIs all seek to do those things but, almost every time, they fail because they still require person-power to crunch the numbers and do the analysis.

In most companies, 96% of problems are not known to top management. Of course, not every issue needs to be escalated to that level, but it gives you an idea of just how little information flows up the chain of command.

Start Here:

Define Winning: Define winning at every level of the organization — everyone should be able to say, “I know I’m winning if…”

Build connections to all of the data available across all channels — from in-house systems or spreadsheets to cloud-based apps.

Create a secure, centralized database of everything that provides a real-time, current snapshot, and historical context of your information.

When data is created and maintained by different users and groups, references to individual items like companies, departments, warehouse zones, and employee names will be different. That kind of difference makes connecting data sources highly complex.

Keeping score of who is winning, who is excelling and who needs help — all in real time for everyone to see — creates a huge differentiator in your working environment. Leverage how people prefer to know the rules and if they are winning, and by how much.

Rules and Triggers define your business and automate portions of your business intelligence. Keeping informed about when things go wrong, when things go right, when actions need to be taken, etc. is the key to operational excellence.

Receive your most up-to-date KPIs in your inbox every morning. And use rules and alerts so the system automatically alerts the right people when things go awry — any shift, any time.

Use good leadership and management principles to drive a common use of metrics and scorekeeping, allowing everyone to have a single version of the truth across departments, systems & people. Ensure everyone knows why the numbers are important and publicly recognize performance on a regular basis.

Allow people to personally benefit from the hard work, good ideas, and improvements within the business. Improved retention, better results, employee engagement, and ownership result from a common purpose and mutual reward system.

Transform your culture and your data strategy

The key is turning the raw data you are already sitting on into actionable insights. Business Intelligence, powered by Artificial Intelligence, is the fastest and easiest way to achieve that goal. But it also requires a change in business mindset: giving everyone appropriate access to the data, creating incentives around the improvements and desired behaviors, democratization of knowledge, and information sharing, just to name a few.

Creating a transformational culture is an integral part of your data strategy.

Download a free white paper:

Other transformation tools:

Spectrum of Impact

With a culture of data sharing and common goals, people adjust their time on the Spectrum of Impact from React/Fix to Improve/Prevent — and then into Create.

Rules of Engagement