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Below is a recent blog post from Harvard Business Review. There are four steps to improve your organization: Improve the data; Build “data to discovery to dollars” processes; Invest in people; Strive to empower all with data. Are you a data-driven manager?

Make Data Work Throughout Your Organization

by Thomas C. Redman and David Walker

Data-driven managers, departments, and organizations have always enjoyed distinct advantages. The data-driven have crafted the best strategies, uncovered wholly new markets, and kept operational costs low. Today, advances in predictive analytics and the potential for big data portend even greater opportunity. Count us among the biggest enthusiasts for continual progress in these and related areas.

Indeed, we think every organization must develop and execute an aggressive plan to put data to work. But the vast majority readily acknowledge themselves as “data rich and information poor.” In these organizations, too few people are involved, too much data can’t be trusted, and too much data lies fallow in vast, unexamined warehouses.

So where to begin? Important as the technology and expertise may be, we find that most companies should focus first on high-quality data, process, people, and culture. Ignoring these is a bit like putting enough energy into a leap to get halfway across a stream; it takes time and money but leads to an unhappy result. We propose four interlocking steps to use your data more effectively and to create a data-driven culture in your company.

Improve the data. ”Garbage in, garbage out!” It is trite to observe that results can be no better than the data on which they are based. Wall Streeters seem to have missed this point when they employed sophisticated algorithms to slice, dice, and price risk into the now infamous collateralized debt obligations, all the while forgetting (or blissfully unaware) that the data about underlying mortgages were corrupt. Make sure the data are properly, clearly, and consistently defined across the organization, improve quality, and promote sharing across units. To be clear, this is not — repeat not — an esoteric tech project. It requires concerted effort across the organization.

Build “data to discovery to dollars” processes. Create processes to put data work across the enterprise. Here we include processes to deliver more to customers; to repeatedly and forever seek hidden truths in data; and to seek out novel data and integrate them with existing data into a more potent whole.

is a terrific example. Armed with a deep understanding at the customer-level of where it makes money (not just generates revenue), a company can forge new relationships, change its price structure, and redirect its marketing campaigns. The technical challenges are legion. But they are nothing compared to the challenges of defining and managing the processes to link data from (disparate) cost and revenue centers, conduct the analyses, and renegotiate contracts.

Invest in people. Obviously, the high-powered analytics types are in short supply. But we’re even more concerned about managers who are accustomed to managing by the seats of their pants (and pantsuits) and threatened by data. Their new roles are essential, but they cannot execute without wholly different mindsets. The McKinsey report on Big Data suggests theU.S. alone faces a shortage of roughly ten analytically-competent managers for each deep analyst. Start by gathering a critical mass of these managers.

Strive to empower all with data. Drive data into every nook and cranny of the organization, show people how data make them more effective, and encourage experimentation. As they “switch on” (albeit slowly), most people make better, more confident decisions; seek opportunities to improve their work; and engage with others on larger, more complex issues.

This last point is driven home over and over. Take this example: One night Tom attended a celebration for a team in a telecommunications company that had drastically improved performance after implementing a new data quality measurement and control system. He asked one woman how the new measurements had impacted her work.

She looked him and said, “You know, before we had these measurements I never had any say in my work. We’d run into a problem, and I’d ask my boss how he wanted me to handle it. And he’d tell me. A lot of times the answer didn’t make sense. But I did what I was told.”

The excitement in her voice rose as she continued: “Now I have the facts. I still go to my boss. But now we discuss those facts. And he lets me do what I think is right. I’ve never had so much control in my work.”

Later that night Tom ran into her boss and asked the same question. He replied, “I always felt like my life was nothing but dealing with problems. People would come to me all day long and ask me how I wanted them to handle something. How the heck was I supposed to know? But there I was. Telling people what to do.”

He continued, “People still come to me with problems. But it’s different now. We figure it out. Together.”

A more capable team quite naturally produces better results. As a data-driven culture permeates more broadly, an enterprise’s abilities to take bold, innovative, concerted action on increasingly larger challenges also grow. This is critical. The really important challenges facing today’s organizations are enormous, multifaceted hydras. They will not yield to data alone. But the deeper, the broader, the more pervasive your data-driven culture, the better your chances.

Related articles

• Make Data Work Throughout Your Organization (blogs.hbr.org)

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Below is a blog post from Inc.com by Tom Searcy. What type of salesperson are you today? I’m interested in your ideas on how you might help your customers in these three areas: Time, Money, and Risk.

What Drives Customer Loyalty Now?

It’s time to put away the golf clubs and pull out Google Reader: Sales are no longer just about personal relationships.

If you think customer loyalty is driven by personal relationships or because of your hard work, then not only are you wrong–but you’re putting your revenue at risk.

The reasons for customer loyalty have changed dramatically in the past decade, according to research published in the book, “The Challenger Sale”

by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson. Relationships and hard work now come in second and third on the list of what customers value most–and what will drive them to change providers.

Instead, customers today are looking for sales people to be experts–not in the products or services that they offer, but rather in the customer’s own business. Sales people who can demonstrate that expertise in the sales process are winning big deals away from formerly entrenched competitors.

Here’s how customers consider your value, from lowest to highest:

• If you know your product, you are a human catalog
• If you know your services, you are a technician
• If you can match your products and services to the customer’s needs, you are a sales person
• If you know a customer’s problems and business, you are a consultant
• If you know a customer’s industry, market challenges and competitors, you are an expert

Customers are moving their business from sales people to experts. If you want to be the big winner in your market, you have to increase your expertise and demonstrate that expertise in meaningful ways to your customer.

Here’s a course of action.

1. Learn your customer’s industry, business challenges and competitors. You don’t have to become an encyclopedia of information to be of increasing value. Instead start with just a few steps:

• Read and subscribe to your customer’s industry’s top two or three blogs.
• Put keyword notifiers in your Internet search tool for the top three or four key terms for your customer’s industry issues.
• Read the trade association newsletters and website materials of your customer’s industry.

2. Ask your customers about changes in their industry. Focus on these four categories: technology, regulation, mergers/acquisitions and innovations. These categories are forward-looking and often are the market drivers with which customers need the greatest help.

3. Suggest how you might help your customers. Explain how your products and solutions address their upcoming challenges. When you are demonstrating expertise, the language you use is important. Focus on their issues more than your offerings. Use the language of:

• Time: How you can help them to be faster and more responsive to the market and to compliance deadlines.
• Money: Saving and making money is always a motivation for a buyer considering the value of expertise. In addition, there is the measurement of money in relationship to the market. How will working with you change their position in the marketplace in the area of value, price, cost or share?
• Risk: The impending negative impact of something that you point out can be a powerful motivator for action. Loss of market share, penalties for non-compliance and the risk of being technologically overrun by competitors are all threats that can help customers see you as a valuable expert.

Achieving a level of expertise value has a big impact on customer loyalty. Increasing your relevant expertise can help you trump your competitors’ hard work and personal relationships.

Related articles

• Boosting customer loyalty is key to retail success: NRF exec (nfcdata.com)
• Win Customer Loyalty By Supporting Your Community
• The Worst Question a Salesperson Can Ask
• The Thank You Economy