How Data Strategy Propels Innovation

How Data Strategy Propels Innovation

by Gwen Garrison, PhD, High Sierra Insights
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Association innovation is critical for both member engagement and organizational vitality. Let’s look at this through the lens of data strategy by developing key business questions and developing a master data list.

First, the engine of any association is its people. Nearly all associations express their mission and vision through the work of the executives and staff to enhance and improve member engagement. The main issue today is how to stay fresh with so many competing demands, especially under the strain of aging technology.

​Data, especially when leveraged in a strategic way, can not only tell leaders where their organization is now, it can help guide them forward. Among all major operational business areas, data can reveal a sense of the story with possible glimpses of where an association could go in the future. 

Much of this is driven by a tacit sense of the data in five areas: member activities, education, events, marketing, and, of course, sales. The data available in these five areas are far more informative and powerful when an intentional strategy is applied to them. 

Two Data Strategy Tactics: Developing Questions and Creating a Master Data List

The first step to take to propel innovation is to harness these observations and develop questions that can be answered with data. Once you prioritize your possible questions, ask what data you already have to answer a question. 

Many of your staff are already querying your operational systems to gain insights on how to engage members through marketing campaigns. This basic routine of identifying data to help inform business activity is often already in place, especially among your mid-level managers.

Next, look to connect data from one application to another. In most associations, staff will download the results from their queries and then seek to match it to another set of results from another system. The problem often comes when you don’t have a data element that you can match well on or quickly. Many organizations use member names as a data element and that can be tedious work fraught with error and thus weaken the sense of trust in the results. ​

We recommend that a key point of your data strategy to support your innovation is to develop a master data list.

A master data list identifies the core data elements used among systems to help on two major areas: 

1. To move the best data through the organization between and among systems
2. To assist in the first steps of business intelligence work by connecting key data points for analysis. Remember the point of business intelligence is to prompt greater data driven decision making by confirming and uncovering patterns on your key business questions.

The added benefit to focusing on master data list is it helps with other necessary organization activity such as building a business data glossary. Business data glossaries help align your business terms with your data and to prepare you for solution building in the business intelligence application space.

Finally, applying these two tactics (developing questions and creating a master data list) to your data strategy has another benefit among your organizational staff: The power of discovery or the ‘aha’ moment. 
There is nothing better than when someone finds a new insight to energize their community. This very moment can rejuvenate your organization with a refreshed sense of purpose and relevance. 

Are you ready to propel innovation forward by leveraging data more strategically? Strategico can help. Reach out and let us help you discover answers that may be out of reach within your  existing data strategy.