Our top 5 for 2019
It’s as traditional as mince pies and Christmas carols…predictions for the year ahead! However, just like mince pies and carols, they can be really good if you indulge just once a year.
So, without further preamble, here are our top 5 things for you to consider as a Data & Insights professionals when it comes to engaging stakeholders in 2019.
Storytelling within reporting
As the bread and butter output of your teams, the effectiveness of reports has been almost universally overlooked with many reports being automatically produced with little or no measurement of their usefulness. Common weaknesses include a lack of ‘so what’s’, failure to control the way the data is interpreted, and no narrative structure. By using the power of storytelling structure within reports you can significantly improve their effectiveness and impact
Data Education
There are two common gripes we encounter across Data & Insights teams. Firstly, being continually asked to provide data that is readily available through self-serve. Secondly, the constant battle to make colleagues across the organisation aware of everyday data they can access. It doesn’t have to be this way! Data education in the form of interactive pdfs outlining what is available (with links), Data Ambassadors and inclusion within employee induction can make significant in-roads into tackling this issue.
Land the key themes
To deliver on your company’s strategic plan, there will be some key themes that need to be landed across the business. Typically these themes will be around your customer. A joined-up, team-wide effort to land these themes, reinforced through regular content such as an internal Data & Insights newsletter will ensure you have control of influencing decision-makers.
Power of infographics
However good and insightful the data, people need to be able to understand and interpret it if they are going to make the right decisions. Infographics are a straightforward way of bringing data to life and are reusable in a host of different ways.
Make your hub user-centric
We’ve seen a lot of different Data & Insights hubs, portals, microsites and all the other names that people give them. Few are fit for purpose because very few are user-centric in the way they present content. In fact it has got to the point that many teams are simply dumping all the content in a shared drive and leaving it at that. This is a big miss and some careful user-centric design can make a massive difference.
We hope you have found our newsletters interesting and helpful over the last year. From the team here at Seen&Read we wish you a relaxing and merry festive period, however you choose to celebrate, and a Happy New Year.