Companies having strong Analytics teams are giving them huge competitive edge over by providing business insights into trends and customer behaviour which otherwise may not be available with the enormous amount of data produced in recent times.
To get the most out of their information resources, enterprises need to have a strong analytics team in place. What does it take to assemble and maintain a top-notch team, and what should these teams be doing to make themselves successful?
Clear Vision:
But before any organization envision of having an analytics team the most critical part is to lay down a vision and charter of the team. This vision shall lay down the foundation of building a world class or a failed analytics engine for the organization.
Traditionally it was left on the business leads to have analyst supporting them in their respective silos leading to a closed loop for the analytics to not flourish into other cracks of the organization, now it is diversity and yet having a central flux of human resources with combination of having business functional skills, technical experts with DWH architects, statisticians, mathematician and machine learning experts on the team who understand algorithms and how they can be applied on data.
Diversity and right mix:
The above combination needs to work like smooth timed pistons in the engine, with technologist building data pipelines within the various operational data systems build a robust analytical environment. You also need business experts who understand the complexities of the domain to solve the problems. The combination needs to have the right skillset with right experience in the mix.
Building the right mix is also based on whether the organization is ready to take data driven business decision and consume them, a lot of organization invest in building such teams but when it comes to apply them into business decision, do not want to give away their right of exert decision based on historic successes they might have tasted, this is deadly for an analytics team and can lead to failure or attritions in skilled analytics operators.
It is also critical for the Analytics lead to have a clear vision for the team, create solid and deep trust in each other and in team’s purpose: few important steps to build productive and effective team:
Step 1: Establish leadership. (Inspire, resolve conflicts, communicate the vision & are trusted)
Step 2: Establish relationships with each of your team members.
Step 3: Build relationships between your team members.
Step 4: Foster teamwork.
Step 5: Set ground rules for the team.
Critical:
Managing and retaining this combination of skilled resources is also a challenge, which should be well planned with keeping the spirit, motivation and most critical is to develop internal knowledge transfer programs to make sure these combinations continue to pump information into the business for food for strategic decision making.
Execution:
In the end, one should not have a single solution to build these high value teams but assess the environment i.e. level of analytics maturity, people traits, process traits & technology traits and unpuzzle the team combinations.
Analytics leadership with clear vision and strong emotional and analytical build is a must for the success of an analytics team.
Anshul Kumar
