8 min read
7 Tips to Fall (Back) in Love with Your Data
For a long time, you were happy with your little Excel reports. With a click of a button, you had an export of figures from your most important system. But gradually, more and more data sources and employees were added. Each with their own data exports and analyses. Slowly the spark between you and your data faded… Fortunately, we've found some tips to help you fall in love with your data again. Wondering if the spark can be reignited? Read our tips below.
#1 Choose the right BI tool
After your bumpy relationship with Excel, you're probably ready for smoother sailing. Fortunately, getting started with a Business Intelligence (BI) tool doesn't have to be a complex or lengthy process at all. But it is important to choose a tool that suits you best.
With BI software from Qlik or Microsoft Power BI, you can build a fully working dashboard within a matter of days. Both Qlik and Power BI are so simple that you drag your data into the app. Then you drag the desired visualizations in, and within minutes you already have a fully dynamic dashboard to click around in and analyze further.
Qlik
With Qlik, you can choose to connect directly to the data sources, meaning no external data warehouse is needed. This can save costs for smaller organizations, but it does mean that all business logic and data connections live in dashboards and may need to be recreated multiple times. It also means switching to another tool, or adding an extra tool, can be difficult.
At E-mergo, we therefore often recommend capturing the logic and data connections in TimeXtender if budget allows.
Power BI
With Power BI, you have a user-friendly BI tool that's also part of the Microsoft Power Platform. This provides numerous benefits and opportunities for your organization. The BI tool is extremely popular and has a large following. For 14 years now, the tool has been a market leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms. Microsoft also provides monthly updates so you always have the latest and best version of the software. Power BI is also exceptionally well suited to combine with TimeXtender.
When you start with Data Analytics, there's no single ready-made solution that works for everyone. At E-mergo, we look at your situation and, based on that, decide together what best suits your organization and what will deliver the desired result. This could be Qlik or Power BI, with or without TimeXtender — it's different for every situation and set of needs.
#2 Don't expect your BI tool to make your data better
BI tools are very good at visualizing data, but if the quality of the data isn't good, your tool can't change that. So don't expect all your relational problems to be solved at once. Research by Gartner from 2017 also shows that bad data is a major problem. It found that a company loses an average of 15 million dollars due to poor data quality. This shows up in, among other things, lower customer and employee satisfaction, increased costs, and poor decision-making. [1]
Poor data quality is often found to be caused by poor or completely absent data management. Think of: poor data verification, no documentation of complexity between systems, no data definitions, and a lack of work instructions. A tool that can help a great deal with this is TimeXtender. TimeXtender is a Data Management Platform used for centrally collecting and managing data and business logic.
#3 Your BI tool is NOT Excel
Old habits die hard, and that's why perhaps one of the most important things to know is that a BI tool is not the same as Excel. BI tools have far more capabilities and functionality than Excel, so it's crucial to respect the differences between them. So don't try to do the same thing in your BI tool that you'd normally do in Excel.
With a BI tool you have far more possibilities than in Excel. Another major advantage is that your tool automates a great many processes, saving you time compared to Excel.
#4 Start with good KPIs
A good start to your relationship is often half the work. By first thinking carefully about what your goals are and what the role of data is in achieving them, you can create good designs for dashboards. It's also important to agree on how detailed the KPIs should be. Management often wants a total overview with KPIs, while at the operational level there's a need for detailed KPIs. By, for example, setting up a KPI tree, you can easily make the relevant KPIs visible per layer.
If you start developing your BI platform without first paying attention to KPIs, you'll also notice that different KPI definitions exist within your organization. Sorting this out in advance prevents differences in data.
Want to know more about this? We've written a couple of blogs about it: "This is why your KPIs fail" and "Do your KPIs really measure what you want to know?".
Marketing: "An account is a converted lead."
Finance: "An account, for reporting purposes, is a customer with financial resources who can do business with us."
Accounting: "An account is a recorded entry in our back office, bookkeeping, and archives."
Legal: "An account is a structured product we offer our customers through a legal agreement they sign."
#5 Connect all your data in one central place
When your organization starts implementing BI software, it's important that data is safeguarded in a secure and central location. You obviously don't want anything to happen to your beloved data. A data warehouse is one example of such a location. By doing this, you ensure that no matter which analytics tool is chosen, all data can always be accessed up to date from 1 central location. This also prevents tools from connecting directly to data systems such as SAP, which can have a negative impact on performance.
Besides having a central place for your data, it's also important to properly arrange version control and data lineage. With data lineage you can see exactly where the data comes from and where it's used. Version control ensures that changes to analytics applications are documented and stored. This way, if a change goes wrong, you can restore an older version.
The Golden Triangle
Although Power BI also offers the ability to collect and manage your data, using a cloud platform such as Azure and a Data Management Platform such as TimeXtender is a lot more convenient and faster when it comes to larger datasets, for example. At E-mergo, we're convinced that when you use Power BI as your Business Intelligence tool, there's an ideal combination to be made between BI, cloud, and data management tools. This combination consists of Microsoft Power BI, Microsoft Azure, and TimeXtender, and we also call it the 'golden triangle'. Check out the blog about the Golden Triangle via the button below.
#6 Use the right data visualization
The design of your dashboard is of course also not unimportant. Poorly chosen data visualizations can undermine the interpretation of the data. The design of your dashboard and the choice of data visualizations must be functional and therefore convey information in the clearest possible way.
Need help? In this decision chart you can easily find which data visualization best suits your data. Choosing the right visualization ensures no confusion arises and that data is interpreted correctly. Besides it being important to choose the right data visualization, it's also important not to use too many, so you keep a clear overview. Read the blog 'Top 10 Pitfalls of Dashboard Design' for more important points to watch out for when designing your dashboard.
#7 Take a beginner's course
A tip we like to give our clients is to have end users take a beginner's course in advance. These training sessions are often only half a day, and in a short time you'll learn the basics of your chosen data analytics tool. You'll also be in a group with other beginners, each with their own questions about the tool, from which you can also learn.
At E-mergo you can of course take such a beginner's course for Power BI and/or Qlik. These courses are completely free and online. Sessions are regularly organized for both tools, giving our users the opportunity to get off to a flying start with Power BI or Qlik Sense.
Fall (Back) in Love with Your Data webinar
Want to discover more about how to fall in love with your data again? Then sign up for our webinar 'Fall (Back) in Love with Your Data' on February 14. During this special Valentine's Day webinar, our Data Strategy Leader Louis de Roo explains why the spark sometimes fades, and you'll learn 3 ways to reignite the relationship with your data. Read more about the webinar via the link, or sign up directly via the form below.