5 Powerful Steps to Inspire Data Readiness

Are you feeling armed with the best strategies to ensure total data readiness? (Especially with all the changes that are coming for brands and marketers alike? We’re looking at you third-party cookies). Feeling inspired for the year ahead on all things data and life in general? If you answered no to either feeling (or to both) no worries. We’re here to help get those good vibes going on both accounts! 

Soaring to new digital heights requires a data foundation that can help get you there. Use cases like advanced analytics, building a single customer view and powering predictive insights can open a world of opportunity if they are built on a foundation of trusted data. How can you ensure your data is ready?

We’ve put together the 5 key actions you’ll want to take to ensure total data awesomeness and readiness – along with some good ol’ fashion inspiration along the way. 

1. Define your data strategy 

“A goal is a dream with a deadline” – Napoleon Hill 

What is your brand striving to do in the year ahead? How will your customer data support those initiatives? What are the KPIs you’ll be defining and measuring success from around that goal? What are the different audiences you’ll need to acquire and activate to achieve this goal? Do you know what use cases you’ll be putting into play? 

Documenting and communicating your organization’s data strategy up front will be crucial to not only being data ready, but to being data powerful with any transformation initiatives you’re executing. 

2. Ensure data completeness 

“That is happiness: To be dissolved into something complete and great” – Willa Cather

Think about all of the data sources you are collecting from – would you be able to map that data all the way from the source to how it will trigger actions to help you complete your goals? Have you listed out what sources your data will be coming in from and how it will be combined with other technology in your stack that houses data? Do you have historical data? Do you have contextual data? 

Determining not only where your data will be coming from, but having a strategy to knowing where it will be going to support your outcomes is a step you won’t want to miss taking. 

Understanding the breadth and depth of your data will help you be able to act on it in a more real-time and relevant way. 

3. Have integrity with your data

“Do what is right – not what is easy” – Ray T. Bennett 

Are you collecting your customer data in a way that’s consistent with the logic and use cases your company uses? Do you have a vendor-neutral data layer in your organization’s nomenclature? And are you collecting data right at that data layer so it’s as clean and correlated as possible, right at the point of collection? Are there systems and processes in place to monitor and validate that incoming data in real-time? 

Poor, loosely-defined, inconsistent data won’t get you any closer to achieving goals like increasing conversions, improving retention or deriving high-quality insights. Be good to your data, and watch how good in return it will be to your brand. 

4. Employ governance and consent strategies 

“Respect should be the first thing you ever give” – Anonymous

If they say the golden rule of life is to treat others how you want to be treated, then the golden rule of data must be to ask yourself if your brand is handling your customers data in the same way you’d want your own to be treated? 

You see, the practices around how you’re using your customer data, are just as important if not more important than the data itself. Read that sentence again. It’s important to ensure you’ve got data governance and consent strategies built-into your data foundation. 

5. Accessibility 

“To achieve greatness, let us be helpful and grateful to others” – Debasish Mridha 

Data and insights need to be accessible to all other tools within your stack – why? Because that’s how you’ll ensure your ML, data privacy, single view of the customer or data analytics project will return the value you’re anticipating. 

Can your customer data be delivered to drive action or further analysis across downstream systems? Are you gathering insights in the same place that customer data is collected so you can trigger downstream action without additional development? And are the insights valuable across all integrated channels? 

By following these 5 steps not only will you be data ready – you will be data unstoppable! Want to take your data projects to new heights? Let us help you drive better customer experiences with your data today!