4 Things About Your Data…Where Do You Stack Up?

Every new account, transaction, online sign-on and mobile payment generates data. We know how vital this data is and how organizations want to use it to create new products, shift consumer loyalties and drive growth; BUT is your organization able to do this? 

4 Things About Your Data…Where Do You Stack Up?

Every new account, every transaction, every online sign-on, every mobile payment generates data. We all know how vital this data is and how organizations want to use it to create new products, shift consumer loyalties and drive growth; BUT is your organization able to do this? 

1.  Is the data being collected?

You almost certainly capture the data needed for regulatory and financial reporting requirements, but are you capturing everything you can? Surprisingly, information thought to have been harnessed is not, and data thought to be easily accessible isn’t. 

 What if you had to answer the question, “how many of my customers have created a mobile login are continuing to use the branch to deposit checks?” If this is not relatively easy to answer, there may be a data collection gap or an opportunity to form a more holistic view of your customers and their activity. 

 Where to begin? Start with an inventory of critical activities and expected data source origination and systems. Validate current information available in your data warehouse. Define what tables and fields will be used, as well as any lookup values, to create a workable environment able to be interpreted and used by the lines of business.  

 2.  Can you get to your data…quickly?

Analytics and BI teams never have a shortage of requests and tasks posed by different lines of business. Countless hours are spent writing code, extracting the data to accommodate requests, and often repeating the process as necessary to obtain the precise information required. Many tools are available in the market designed to make gathering and manipulating the data easier for the common business user. But to get to the point of easy access, one must understand how to extract information.   

 Imagine wanting to execute a campaign targeting customers spend volume with particular types of retailers. How hard would it be to seek out and obtain this information? Would it require going to multiple sources, both people and systems, who then must extract information and align it together. And most importantly, how quickly will you be able to get your answer? 

 Being able to source information to make a relevant business decision or review performance of past campaigns is critical, particularly when allocating limited marketing dollars. Reviewing the process and time it takes to extract and apply information is worth understanding and will most likely uncover obstacles in much need of streamlining. 

 3.  Are you using your data effectively? 

Once the appropriate data is being collected and is accessible promptly, the question becomes is it used effectively, or are the same KPI’s driving most decisions? Standard performance reports, while important, often show month-over-month trends and compare to point in time when in practicality, the data can provide so much more. 

 Understanding how to leverage the information your organization has is critical to answering questions related to portfolio performance but also your organization’s internal performance. Missed opportunities for various business process transformations may go unnoticed when not analyzing critical factors in your data to improve key workflows and reduce operational expense. 

 Back offices, contact centers, and fulfillment areas often struggle to fully capture volumes and performance for every action. However, more effective use of data can uncover critical learnings such as operational redundancies, reduced paper-related activities, lengthy turnaround times or ways to keep front-line agents from over-compensating when addressing customer-related issues such as fees or other expenses. The data is likely there if you look for it, and it just needs to be harnessed effectively. 

 4.  How helpful is your data in driving measurable improvements in consumer experience and behaviors, process efficiency, and project decisions? 

Chances are at some point, you created a process flow, and once every detail related to the activity was documented, it most likely generated some eye-opening discussions of “We do that?” followed by “Why?”. Most projects require a defined ROI articulating the business case to get approval and pushing them forward requires harnessing and utilizing the correct data to make informed decisions. 

The last year created the need to expedite many initiatives, particularly related to the digital space, from ease of customer onboarding to intelligent chatbots and expedited loan funding. Many organizations had to quickly learn what customers were expecting and how to provide those technologies, hoping the data they had would be instrumental in determining the right approach. 

Reflecting on your organization's changes in the last year, were you able to use your data to provide insight on costs and profitability at an account level? Did you uncover any obstacles in the customer experience due to not having a complete understanding of what was happening today? Were front-line personnel able to measure the performance of their efforts, or were inferences made based on limited data?  

Data collected, stored, and measured…so now what? 

If you have read through the above and determined your organization is covering the basics but may have some gaps, keep these thoughts in mind: 

• Capturing data is good; making it readable through data cleansing is critical. 

• Providing reports is good; enabling the direct lines of business to extract and manipulate the data reduces the drain on BI teams and advances timeframe on speed to decision. 

• Constructing a comprehensive and accessible data repository is good; ensuring data consistency, structure, and interpretation meanings are in place will make the difference in the long run.