Selling the value of analytics within an organization is a key to the success for data projects (Stubbs 2011). The group creating the data insights are rarely the group that is executing the strategy developed from the data. Measuring the value of a project is critical to selling a project to decision-makers who are focused on the cost and returns of a project. It is important to ensure the right metrics are chosen upfront to define success and to tell the story of how to take action around the questions that were answered to ensure value is obtained.
To define the value of a project it is important to identify the right measures of the return that includes both tangible and intangible items in a broad range of benefits (Stubbs 2011). Different stakeholders will focus on different aspects of a project so ensuring the communications of value are focused on different perspectives like those focused on analytics, process, personal impact, and strategy is important. It is critical to ensure there is a framework for measuring value and documenting other benefits that aren’t metrics-based. The measured value should be able to be captured from the data available, easy for staff to track and update, and can be used to compare against other more tangible projects since leadership will be making investment decisions across more than just data projects. Maintaining consistency in recording the data so comparison to historic behavior is easy to define by utilizing data governance and pre-established metrics for what success looks like are important factors in ensuring value can be showcased in the short and long term.
An analytics project is like any other project in an organization, an investment of time and capital to obtain returns in value on those investments. Being able to cohesively track and tell the story of the project is important in getting approval to proceed but also helps develop a culture that supports data innovations. Regular reporting around the return of value can be a useful tool in ensuring the immediate and ongoing value of projects are tracked and the story is continually told.
Author: Logan Callen
References
Stubbs, Evan. 2011. “The value of business analytics.” Analytics, February 25, 2020. http://analytics-magazine.org/the-value-of-business-analytics/
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