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How to Build an Analytics Culture: Building an Analytics Advocate Within Your Organization (2021-US-45MP-859)

Level: Beginner

 

Sarah Springer, Account Executive, Global Premier Team, JMP
Biljana Besker, Account Executive, Global Premier Team, JMP

 

Do you want to build an analytics culture within your organization? We discuss how to develop an analytics strategy and advocate. There are facets to an analytics culture that require significant change. This change must begin with leadership and advocates within the organization who can set the tone and lead from the front. The analytics advocate must work to promote data as a strategic asset. 

 

This presentation addresses how analytics advocates can facilitate change, overcome resistance to change, promote collaboration, and educate and empower their workforces. They must find additional stakeholders to help execute a unified vision for change within the organization and adopt a plan that can result in an educated workforce to foster a successful analytics program.

 

As a tool to help upskill your organization’s workforce, this presentation also outlines and highlights unique ways companies can use content from Statistical Thinking for Industrial Problem-Solving (STIPS), an online statistics course available – for free – to anyone interested in building practical skills in using data to solve problems better.

 

 

Learn more about being an Analytics Advocate:

 

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Speaker

Transcript

Gail Massari start.
Biljana Besker Hi! I'm Biljana Besker, and I'm a JMP Account Executive for Global Premier accounts. My colleague Sarah Springer
  and I will introduce you today on how to become an Analytics Advocate in your company, and what resources we have available at JMP to help you get there.
  So let's start. What defines an Analytics Advocate? The Analytics Advocate must be an advocate and a change agent who spreads the analytic strategy emphasis and analytic culture
  that everyone is comfortable using data-based insights to improve the quality and effectiveness of their decisions. Five characteristics to look for in an Analytics Advocate our.
  First credibility.
  They are trusted and well respected because of a proven track record of managing difficult projects to successful completion.
  And they have empathy because they listen to and address fears and resistance to change as new steps are taken on this unfamiliar path.
  And, of course, they are problem solvers. They are willing to roll up their sleeves and work to overcome technical and cultural challenges that arise through each stage of implementation.
  They always show commitment. They support the analytic strategy and promote a consistent interpretation of the goals for analytics.
  And they are flexible. Data driven decisions require ongoing evaluation of their effectiveness. An Analytics Advocate must recognize when a part of the analytics strategy is not working, and work with all parties to redefine the solution.
  What is considered to be the Analytics Advocate's role?
  As an Analytics Advocate, you must promote data as a strategic asset, and you have to address resistance and promote collaboration.
  And there is a big need to promote the culture of evaluation and improvement and to educate and empower the workforce.
  So assets do not necessarily have essential value. And assets are associated with liabilities, so how to promote data as a strategic asset?
  Analytics is about having the right information and insight to create better business outcomes.
  Business analytics means leaders know where to find the new revenue opportunities, and which product or service offerings are most likely to address the market requirement.
  It means the ability to quickly access the right data points to find key performance and revenue indicators in building successful growth strategies, and it means recognizing risks before they become realities.
  So how can you address resistance? There are three levels of resistance you must overcome.
  The first and most important level is the C-Level resistance. Preparing the technical infrastructure for an effective analytic program
biljana Besker may require significant resource investment for an unknown return. This should be addressed, where possible, with a small project requiring minimal infrastructure to secure a quick win with positive expected ROI.
Biljana Besker If this is not possible, then show examples where others in the same industry have benefited.
  Second, is the department-level resistance. Process owners may resist the perceived effort associated with data governance processes needed to make data cleaning sufficient to support analytics.
  The Analytics Advocate must find ways to show how such efforts will result in securing long term benefits to the organization
biljana Besker that will turn in rewards and recognition for the department. Again, quick win projects can help; however, the Analytics Advocate should not stop there. Important tasks are best accomplished with a dependable ally with shared interests.
Biljana Besker And last but not least, we have the frontline worker resistance. As business process owners, frontline workers are not interested in extra work, as we know,
biljana Besker if it's not reflected in the metrics used to access their performance. A smart Analytics Advocate addresses the question "what is in for me?"
Biljana Besker Integrating analytics solutions into existing workflows reduces incremental effort and empowers frontline workers to make more informed decisions and improve job performance.
  So how to become an effective Advocate of Analytics.
  As an analytic analyst you are obviously aware of the power of data analysis. You know that data application of appropriate analysis techniques
biljana Besker to a well constructed, meaningful data set can reveal a great deal of useful information, information that can lead to new opportunities, improvements and efficiency,
  reduction in costs and other advantages. While many organizations have adopted analytics on a wide scale, several others still employ it only in certain areas, and some, believe it or not, rarely use it at all.
Biljana Besker If you often get excited thinking about new ways of applying analytics in your organization and are eager to share your excitement with people you think would benefit of analytics, you are in a good position to become an Analytics Advocate in your company.
  So, first focus on the person's greatest challenges and most burdensome tasks.
  Everyone has something about their job that is a source of frustration, no matter how much they love what they do. For the person you're working with, a meaningful application of analytics is one that relieves his or her frustration or minimizes it as much as possible.
  As long as the application is also important to the overall business, this is a great way to begin to show someone the true value of analytics.
  It's also a good idea to start small and then work your way up to bigger projects later so that you're not overwhelmed and just don't run the risk of not being able to deliver.
  Second, is incorporate their knowledge and expertise. You may be an expert on the application of analytics, but you are most likely not an expert on every functional area of your organization. Not even the CEO can make that claim.
  Therefore, you must rely on the insight of others to help you understand all of the complexity that cannot be contained within the data set,
biljana Besker including any legal, ethical, or other considerations that must be taken into account. What's more, you are demonstrating respect for their specific knowledge, which will help build trust and make them more eager to work with you.
Biljana Besker Third, learn to speak the language. Again, being able to understand and communicate in the terminology used by the people you're working with will demonstrate that you are willing to meet them on their terms.
  It's not a two way street, however. Avoid using analytical and statistical terminology as much as possible. If necessary, practice finding ways to explain difficult or complex concepts in an easy to understand manner. Metaphors often work well for this.
  Fourth, publicize your victories and show the credit.
  Sorry, and share the credit. Once you have successfully completed the project, be sure to tell your boss. Ask him or her to spread the word throughout the organization and externally, if possible.
  But make absolutely sure that the credit is shared with those who assisted you in the project. This will help build attention to the power of analytics within the organization, as well as make those people you've just worked with feel rightfully appreciated and respected.
  If you look closely at these four recommendations you'll notice they all have one thing in common. They put the focus on what you can do to help others.
  Whether you follow these specific tips or not, as long as you promote the use of analytics as a service that can help a person solve a problem that is important to them, you will go a long way toward fostering a positive attitude toward analytics throughout your organization.
  So, but how to become a successful advocate of analytics.
  Put user experience first.
  For companies, it can be tempting to overlook the role of the end user and focus solely on business outcomes,
biljana Besker which is why the Analytics Advocate must ensure that the focus remains on the value and overall experience for end users in addition to the positive business outcomes the company wants to achieve.
Biljana Besker To bring us back to our earlier discussion of low adoption and analytics strategy that does not consider the users position and needs.
  It's at risk to become a strategy that is technically capable but not valuable enough to keep users engaged.
  To mitigate this risk, the Analytics Advocate must be able to explain both the benefit of the analytic strategy to the business but also ensure that the strategy is beneficial for the end users who need to make business decisions.
  And push the analytic strategy to evolve. Of course, user and business requirements change over time, so once the strategy is launched, the Analytics Advocate must ensure that the strategy evolves to meet those demands.
  Without repetition the strategy runs the risk of outliving its usefulness and driving adoption rates down as a result.
  Instead the Analytics Advocate must monitor, manage, and drive the strategy forward to ensure ongoing utility at maximum business value.
  Companies who want to introduce an analytic strategy can make themselves much more likely to achieve success by putting
biljana Besker that strategy in the hands of someone who can understand end users and push the project to improve experiences and business outcomes. Who understands the analytics represents a journey, not a destination.
Biljana Besker Successfully appointing an Analytics Advocate is the first step in this process.
  Let me summarize what you just learned. At the most strategic level analytics allows organizations to unlock latent value from the data to gain insights, accomplish business objectives, and improve profits.
  While these insights should empower everyone in the organization many organizations resist the cultural changes needed to benefit from an analytics program.
  As first step executive leadership must establish and support analytics strategy.
  Then designate an Analytics Advocate to engage stakeholders to unify that vision, understand and address pain points, overcome resistance to adoption, and demonstrate the value from analytics through quick win projects.
  All organizations can better accomplish their mission of leveraging analytics with a data driven decision process.
  Using analytics to achieve a sustainable, competitive advantage and generate significant return on investment begins with a well convinced analytics strategy and roadmap for success that is aligned with and supports the overall business strategy.
  And with that said, I would like to hand over to my colleague, Sarah Springer who will show you how JMP can help you to become an analytical advocate in your organization. Thank you.
Sarah Springer Hi, I'm Sarah Springer. Biljana, thank you so much for providing that great overview of what makes a good Analytics Advocate within an order to get it within an organization.
  I'm gonna look a little more closely at a couple of those areas that Biljana touched on, and we're going to talk about a process and some tangible resources that will assist you and your organization in building a culture of analytics.
  So how can JMP support your organization in becoming more analytical, and how can we support an Analytics Advocate? So we've outlined a process here to help you accelerate your organization's analytics growth curve.
  So that process is going to go through a couple of steps. So first we're going to talk about how to build a team of data ambassadors. We're going to talk about the best way and some resources to identify key use cases and define success.
  We're going to talk about how to establish an efficient data workflow.
  How to educate and what resources we have available to educate and upskill yourself and your colleagues.
  How to socialize your analytics successes. And then how to democratize data and the process.
  So, Biljana touched on this in her presentation, but what is in it for you? If you're an Analytics Advocate within your organization, what can this do for you as an individual?
  You can be a vision setter and a change agent throughout your organization. This is an opportunity for you to make a real impact on the lives and the well-being of the people in your organization.
  You can be a subject matter expert. If you identify a specific problem or a specific area of need and upskill yourself in that area, you can really be looked at as an SME within your organization.
  And gain some recognition for yourself and within your organization and within the JMP community. You'll be gaining credibility.
  You'll become a leader in teaching others the skills that you've learned and upskilled on.
  And then ultimately we've seen a lot of our analytic champions throughout all of our organizations really have a strong resume and
  advance in their careers because of the great work they've been doing at their organizations in building a culture of analytics.
  Data is everywhere. Analytics is an important competitive tool.
  And it's really past the point of being able to not have analytics embedded in your organization, and so what we've seen is individuals that have been an Analytics Advocate within their organization have
  been quite successful, and so this is a real opportunity for you. But what Biljana mentioned is it's really also about helping others and making an impact on your organization and the world around you. And so what's in it for your organization?
  Advocates play a key role in demonstrating value and ROI. You're able to pick a project, a real challenge that you or your organization is having and show the true value
  of the impact that analytics can play to your organization. Adoption of JMP or an analytical tool or an analytical culture can really help, again, bring the organization into the digital transformation age.
  It's at the point, right, where we can no longer not take advantage of all of this data that we have, and so in this role, you have a real chance to make an impact at your organization. And again, impact your organization's bottom line, save your organization money
  by improving processes or producing less waste. Other use cases we've seen are securing time to market, and you're really helping your company to stay competitive.
  So the first part of the process as you're thinking, "how do I make an impact at my organization" is to think about, as Biljana mentioned,
  "Who can come along with me in this journey? Who else is feeling the same pains? Who else can benefit from a strong analytic culture?"
  So looking beside you and to other departments but then also up. Who at the executive level,
  what executive sponsor might be interested in some of these pain points I'm having? How can I get stakeholders to support this movement? How can we get
  buy in early? And so the goal is to find reliable, passionate, accountable people that are maybe having some similar challenges as you to walk through this journey
  with you and to help, you know as Biljana mentioned, show the value and prove to leadership and prove to stakeholders that this work is valuable and deserves attention and investment.
  Once you have your colleagues, and you have buy in, and you have your team, what we want to do is the next step of the process is really looking at identifying key use cases
  and defining success. So what success looks like is an important part of defining an analytic strategy. Thinking about
  some common use cases within your organization. Maybe you have too much data; maybe there's data not being used; too many systems to get the job done; not a good way to share decisions;
  maybe there's a lot of wasted time, you know, being able to sift through all of that so, so figuring out what is my organization's challenge.
  What would success look like, how can I move the needle?
  As Biljana mentioned, starting small is important. We want to think, maybe, of something that's not a huge undertaking, but maybe it has a broad impact.
  So as you're thinking of the right place to start these are some things to consider. Some great resources that I would recommend as you're thinking through this if you want to look at your organization's annual report,
  or 10-K if you're a public organization, or maybe there are some internal documents that are outlining for the year what your risk factors are as an organization. You can get a strong overview of some of the concerns that executive leadership has about
  maybe some of the risks that they could approach this year. Often we see some risks across R&D and manufacturing that might be very relevant
  to being able to solve that problem with analytics. Maybe it's time to market; maybe it's improving
  any sort of defects in the manufacturing process, right, those are things outlined in your organization's 10-K
  or your annual report, and that could be a really great win for you, right, if you can pull some folks together to want to solve one of those problems or improve one of those processes.
  The other resource I would recommend taking a look at is
  going to the JMP website and looking at our customer success stories. There's a whole library across industry and challenge that could really get your wheels turning and give you some great ideas about some possible use cases and what success might look like.
  So, once you have your team, and once you have the goal next you want to think about how to create and establish an efficient data workflow. So, it's important that you're able,
  in order to do great analysis, you want to have
  good data access, you want to be able to streamline that process, how are you pulling analyzing and sharing that data, how are you getting the right information to the right groups.
  Where is your data? Is it accessible? Is there anything you can automate? Can you make anything easier? Can you use JMP Live to share information? So there's a lot of things to take a look at. Tangible resources for this include conversations with IT. Maybe you can look at
  possible scripting or automation within JMP or within your analytical tools to really make an impact to make this as easy as possible so that it's in the hands of the right people who can solve these real problems and contribute to your success and the success of your organization.
  So next we're going to talk about a step that is very close to my heart--training and upskilling colleagues. I spent some years at SAS within SAS Education helping JMP users do just this.
  And so I wanted to touch on, you know, once you have your team, you define your goals, you've got your data access in a good spot, we want to talk about how do we give
  our team and employees and users the tools and the knowledge to execute this plan.
  What we're finding; there was a survey done by HR Dive's studio ID and SAS that was conducted in October of 2020, and they found that this is a huge need. Eighty-eight percent of managers said they believe their employees' development plans needed to change for 2021. A lot of this was coming out of
sarah Springer us kind of shifting into a pandemic world and people working remotely, and folks are really asking for training and for development and for help. Out of the survey, 50% of managers said employees needed more upskilling, more reskilling, and more cross-killing and 41% of the
  employees themselves said the same thing, and that when considering the types of skills employees should focus on employees needed more technical skills.
Sarah Springer They really, really want to build their skill set, and so as you're thinking about how to, you know, build an analytics culture, training and upskilling is really important, and people are wanting those more technical skills so that they can make a contribution in this age of digital transformation.
  So the survey also brought to light five major learning and development trends. So just wanted to highlight this as something to be thinking about as you think about your strategy.
  The trends were that companies are now expected to take on more responsibility for employees and society and making sure that they're getting what they need,
  that people are being taken care of. And companies need to match, another thing was that companies need to match their technological investment with the learning and development of their people.
  Learning and development are much more universal, much more universal, and it's really a strong recruiting and retention skills, and again these hard skills are really in demand and so
  as you're thinking about your strategy it's so important to think about how can I help my colleagues, my organization get the right knowledge and training in their hands so that they can really be impactful with all of this data that we have.
  So, here at JMP we have a couple of resources I want to point out that can be really powerful to help upskill your organization. The first that we're going to touch on is the Statistical Knowledge Portal.
  Then we're going to take a deeper dive into STIPS, which is our statistics course. It's a free online course called Statistical Thinking for Industrial Problem Solving.
  It is award winning, and it is self-paced and a wonderful resource that many of our customers are using to provide analytical development to their employees.
  And then, finally, we do have some formal SAS training and some resources that I do want to point out as we go through this process.
  So the Statistical Knowledge Portal is a great site, I've put the link there for you,
  that has information in all of these different areas that I've listed. So, it's a great way, if you have somebody that needs to know a very specific skill,
  they can go on here, they can pull some resources and skill up fairly quickly.
  It's a great way to get them started, to get their feet wet, to develop some knowledge, to get some tips and tricks. I would highly recommend spending some time on this website.
  And then you as the Analytics Advocate can really help,
  you know, drive the person to what skill they might need based on your project, right, so I think there's a lot of collaboration that can happen here.
  But I do want to point out that this is a phenomenal free resource on the JMP website and has a lot of great statistical information for you.
  The next one I want to point out is STIPS. So, all of these modules over on the right are self-paced. They're deep dives into the topic area, there are hands on exercises,
  and it's really going to help you get up to speed and understand that statistical concept, so as you're
  working on your project as you're working towards your goal, think about different areas of this course that might be helpful.There is a great overview module at the beginning as well, that I would recommend, that talks about
  what different processes you can use to begin to be thinking statistically throughout your organization.
  So it starts at the beginning, and then it goes all the way down to advanced modeling. So it can really meet you where you are, and we'll talk a little bit more about this course.
  So what I love about this course is this is really something that JMP has put out because they want folks to be strong in analytics. They want folks to understand statistics and to understand the why behind what we're doing.
  And so we've put out some additional resources to help companies upskill their teams, so you can take this course in a self-paced format, but we've had many, many customers
  want to use these materials in a different way. We have customers doing lunch and learns throughout their organization, having sessions where they'll take a specific concept from the course and have discussion groups.
  We have professors and universities using STIPS, or some of this material, as prerequisites or even within their statistics courses.
  And so what we've done is we've made teaching materials that has put some of this material into PowerPoint slides for you to use
sarah Springer at your organization for some internal training, and we wanted to make that easy and accessible for you. So, going to jmp.com/statisticalthinking, there's an online form on the right hand side of the page
Sarah Springer where you can fill that form out and get these materials to use to help upskill your team.
  We also have student activity reports available, so when somebody takes this course, they come to the SAS website,
  and they take it within the virtual learning environment, so if you do want to use this within your organization as part of your internal training, or perhaps
  as some sort of prerequisite for another training, you may ask for student activity reports
  in order to have an understanding of who's completed what. There are some opt in requirements there to make sure we're complying with privacy laws, but I do want to let you know that that is available if you'd like to use STIPS in that way.
  And we do have some other requests here and there that don't necessarily fit in these two buckets, so if you require more customization we do also encourage you to talk to your account teams about that.
  There is also on the right hand side of the Statistical Thinking page on the JMP website there's an option
  to register a form for this third bucket so someone can reach out to you and talk to you a little bit about what else is available.
  But I just wanted to provide a quick overview on this. These are really tangible resources that can be leveraged within your organization to creatively upskill your team.
  And then, finally, the third training resource I wanted to touch on is formal SAS training. SAS has incredibly
  strong, relevant trainings, hands on trainings that provide a real great depth and understanding of different concepts.
  So there's lots of different formats for individuals, large groups, small groups, and I've put the link up here, so you can go check out those courses as well. It's a really great way to upskill your team and then make sure they have the right tools.
  And if you don't know where to start, I definitely wanted to highlight a tool that SAS Education offers called the Learning Needs Assessment.
  It's a data driven survey that can be distributed to your team according to learning area, you know, of what major areas that we often see our customers needing.
  Maybe the the major courses that SAS Education offers around Design of Experiments or scripting or ANOVA and Regression, right, these are great resources.
  And if you don't know where to start, we want to be able to survey your team, identify what their preferred learning style is, identify their competency in these areas
  and then put it in a report that's easy for you and managers and executive leadership to understand.
  And then we would work together with you to make great recommendations those, and recommendations could be use of STIPS,
  it could be use of formal training, it could be complimentary resources from the Statistical Knowledge Portal, but it helps give you an idea of where to start if you're not quite sure according to your project and your goals what your skill gaps are.
  Sometimes you need a little help identifying those so that's what this is for.
  So once you've got your team upskilled and once your team is trained in the areas
  and you're working on your project, it's time to document those successes, right? Biljana touches this on this as well. You want to be able to document that as a proof of concept, show the value to your organization,
  continue to get that commitment and investment in your work, your team's work, in the power of analytics. Continue to help your organization move towards digital transformation, and so
  being able to document these successes are important. A couple of resources that I've found helpful to do this, I think, the main one is our customer success program. We do have a great program I mentioned earlier, where
  you can get these stories published on the website, but we've also helped some organizations with internal stories.
  You know, ask your account team for help. We want to help you document these successes, and so we can certainly help you do that, and then often we can help you do that if you want to tell a story, and JMP we would love to help you show the impact that you've made for your organization.
  And then finally being able to democratize data and the analytic process. So this is one of those steps. How can we take what you've done as a group
  and then spread this further throughout your organization.
  You know, once you've done this and you've documented your successes, I'm sure you're seen as effective as a leader.
  You're probably well respected, so now you get the opportunity to make even broader of an impact on
  your colleagues and and bring them along with you in that success and make an impact on your organization. So what you can do from here is really empower more people to be more data driven.
  And, you know, I think using things like I mentioned with some of the STIPS tools. Maybe you're leading lunch and learns, maybe you're creating a user group,
  maybe you're doing an internal newsletter about the power of analytics, maybe you're working with the JMP team to do doctor's day in sessions, or
  you know, different sessions around the features that have been very helpful to you with your project, so this is your opportunity to help others.
  Help others at your organization make an impact, and help your organization shift to be more data driven in today's digitally transformed world.
  So I want to leave you with some tangible next steps. We've gone through a process
  of how to build a culture of analytics, and as a next step, JMP has a great resource jmp.com/advocate where you can go and learn more
  about each of the steps that we've outlined today and what resources are available to you that correspond to each step, so today's been a great overview,
  but if you do want to take a tangible step to move towards an analytical culture within your organization, I would highly recommend that you go here
  and check it out. And then don't hesitate to reach out to your account team. We're all here to help, and we want to support you in making an impact at your organization and around the world.
  Here are sources for your viewing pleasure and I just want to thank you very much for your time and attention today Be well.