It’s no longer enough to provide stakeholders with reports or fancy dashboards when they want to understand what’s happening in the business. The new value of data is in the story it tells, and for analysts we’re only as good as the stories we share.
Data analysis is the backbone of any successful business. In fact, data is so important that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to have a competitive edge without an understanding of how your company’s metrics are performing.
In order to create this understanding, analysts often turn to analytics software and reports in order to provide stakeholders with the numbers they need to make decisions or take action. But these aren’t enough anymore because now we also need stories – we need something for stakeholders and executives (our clients) other than static graphs and spreadsheets.
Just as understanding the business context of data requests helps to provide scope for the analysis itself, creating compelling stories from the results helps stakeholders understand what the data means in context, why they should care and what they should do now with the new data provided.
Telling a story with your data doesn’t need to be complicated, and sometimes it can be as simple as saying this is what was observed (the WHAT), this is why it matters to you (the WHY), and this is what we need to do now (WHAT NEXT).
The most important takeaway is that you can’t expect the end user to get the required information out of graphs and charts, these are supporting documents to the insights you provide. Don’t rely on the tools to do your job for you.
ashleigheg 