Data Sharing Best Practices: Three Ways to Give Employees Access to Analytics Without Breaking the Bank

Communicating insights to users: Where do you even start?

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One of the great questions we face in life is: “How do I even get started?”. There are a litany of answers for any project. If you’re building a bird feeder or changing your car’s oil — well, it’s a pretty straightforward process of gathering information. Just consult Google, ChatGPT, or YouTube, and you’ll have the magic answer.
 
But what about getting started with analytics? More to the point, how do you serve up insights in an accessible way so that all stakeholders gain the insights they need to perform well?
 
Analytics is a powerful tool for storytelling – but it’s not just about tools. As an organization, you’ve downloaded the latest and greatest tool, and you’ve likely started the process of identifying and gathering the necessary data, selected a few key metrics, and even pinned down a talented analyst to start delivering insights to you.
 
But analytics don’t live in isolation. So how do you get the information you’re gathering out to more people? How do you share those insights, and the fruits of your analysts’ labor, with people who don’t know data and analytics? How do we deliver useful, data-driven Insights to people who don’t have a software license to the new BI Tool? And how do you enable users to take advantage of the opportunities you’ve presented to them?
 
The answer is simple:
 
 Start simple.
 
I’ve been consulting in the data and analytics field for more winters than I care to admit, and I can tell you that many organizations struggle with this process of sharing information gleaned from analytics, especially if they’re just starting out on their analytics journey. To get you started down the right path, I’d like to offer up a few ways that I’ve coached – and delivered insights to – people within an organization, without buying everyone a license for the software or sacrificing quality (i.e., spreadsheet-free).
 
All the methods below are low- to no- cost but can really boost your teams’ performance by getting "the facts” directly to them. It’ll also, in my experience, get them excited.

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Method #1: Make the BI tool the center of the meeting (but pactice first)

In today’s work world, meetings are like bills: you can’t get away from them. In this case, that works in our favor. Introduce your dashboards and data stories during a meeting with your leaders where you can discuss the state of the business, preferably molding the conversation around your chosen KPIs – but be sure to practice first. Your test run should be in a casual and safe space; the best meeting to target is one where the atmosphere is informal, and content is more conversational. You might misspeak or have a technical hiccup, and you don’t want that to derail the entire agenda.
 
This can be a great opportunity to show off your new BI tools, and it’s also a relevant setting in which to deliver insights straight to the people who need them most. During the test run, rather than just talking about the insights or scrolling through a spreadsheet, pop open the BI tool and use it to deliver your key insights. There are many advantages to this approach:
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1. First, you’re showing off a new shiny bauble. Showing and not purely telling demonstrates investment in advancing the company’s technology, and helps leaders understand what they’ve put their money into – why it works well, what its shortcomings might be, how developing it can add value, and so on.
2. ‍Second, you’re using the tool itself, rather than a recreation of data in a presentation, to deliver insights, which demonstrates the transparency of the source data.  Popping up a slide with some charts is nice, but consider this: how powerful is it to deliver your high-level metrics then dive into their questions, on the fly, with your new tool? Not gonna lie to you, it takes practice, but it’s powerful. It can also drive acceptance and adoption. (We’ll save that for a different post).
3. ‍A third advantage of this approach is simply testing out the metrics. You will quickly learn if your metrics are sound, because (I promise) someone is going to challenge the numbers. This is an important part of the process because validating and supporting the metrics you’re using will garner acceptance.

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Method #2: Embed relevant dashboards into web-enabled platforms to make insights immediately accessible

When was the last time you went to your local grocery store, gathered your items, went to the checkout, and then DIDN’T read at least one headline from the nearby magazine rack, while waiting in line? Be honest. Yeah, I thought so, me too.

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An oft-overlooked yet highly effective method of distributing analytics to people without buying them a license is to embed your analytics into the web-enabled platforms they use every day. Now what does that mean?

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Ask yourself: Does your organization have an intranet page or user portal? A place where users go to get company news, important links, and see announcements? Consider embedding your analytics there, since most modern BI Tools can embed objects; imagine opening your laptop, logging into your company portal, and immediately accessing key updates. The closer you get to the places where people are actually going to perform their role, the better.

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Once you have an idea of where, the question of “what” comes up.

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Again, start simple. Organizationally, identify two or three metrics that will help inform people about how the organization is doing. To start, it’s fine to share some novelty or fun metrics – the “clear and cheerful” approach. Orders per Month, Top Selling Items Month to Date, Top 10 Customers Year to Date, and New Customer Orders – as examples. Not every company sells widgets, so if you want a little help finding your KPIs, we’re here. 

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Benefits of embedding dashboards into web-enabled platforms

When looking at embedding some analytics into your intranet or portal, the initial goal is to use these fun metrics as a (hopefully) positive feedback cycle that will make your people want to engage with analytics. Keep in mind that some employees may think they lack the data literacy to really “get” analytics dashboards, but easy access and clear dashboards can prove they’re more adept than they know.

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Look at these “fun” metrics this way: People are likely to feel good about seeing one of their customers on the portal or talk about how they didn’t know a particular product sells so well. Just reporting Sales and Margin is boring. You want to create some buzz to socialize the initiative and enable your teams at the same time. Presenting a few low-pressure metrics will allow you time to work out some kinks, too. Choosing purely informational figures will remove the pressure of being precise, and guard against negative backlash, should you not get a metric right on the first try.
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Your biggest danger: If something happens and the metrics are wrong or don’t load correctly, the impact is minimal, but the learning opportunity for the analytics team is still valuable.  Technology is tough, you will have mistakes and errors. Learning those lessons by delivering cheerful metrics is a lot easier than learning them through mistakes and errors in a stakeholders Board Report. 

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Tool #3: Direct-to-user e-mailing and report distribution

At this point, you might be thinking: Sure, this is all great, but we already do those things. What are some other ideas? Distributing reports via e-mail is a great way to deliver information to users without buying them a license to your BI Tool and training them. Most modern BI Tools have some sort of report distribution capability built in, while others may have supplemental software that will get the job done. 

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I have a love/hate relationship with this method. I love the ability to send analytical updates to users’ inboxes. It’s a great way share targeted information that‘s relevant to that specific person. When choosing a software to distribute reports via email, choose one that is feature-rich, and has the capability to filter data down to the data that is relevant to a specific recipient(s), or groups of recipients. Also look for features like report delivery to file directories, and the ability to embed objects directly into the body of the email.  This enables information to be delivered to an inbox that is very relevant and contextual to that specific person.   It shortens the time-to-insights, and inspires confidence in the tools because the recipients know what to expect, and don’t have to hunt for what’s relevant to them.

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Embed analytical objects directly into the e-mail

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That said: What I hate about these platforms is that organizations will often use them to email spreadsheet reports. Nothing says effective storytelling like “open this email, now open this spreadsheet and read through all the lines one by one” (just kidding).

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Rather than sending out spreadsheets, look for opportunities that allow the report creator to embed analytical objects directly into the body of the email. How great would it be to send an email with a couple of high-level metrics on it with the caption:
 
Our current rolling 12-month average of orders per month is 13,500, and this month-to-date, we’ve taken 7,900 orders.

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That’s AMAZING! Look at those numbers. How good will your teams feel to see that they’re performing in a concrete way? It’s possible. I’ve done it, and it isn’t as difficult as you might think.
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Look at this:

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That’s way better than one that looks like this:

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Make it easy for your recipient to consume the analytics

I’ve found that the key to driving adoption with this method of analytics delivery is to make it easy for the recipient to consume the information. E-mails should be skimmable in one minute or less. If a user needs to dig for information, they will likely put it off for later or forget about it altogether.

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Deliver insights directly to users

The key to the kingdom, really, is to look for ways to deliver insights directly to your people – you don’t need to buy expensive software licenses to do that. Analytics distribution doesn’t have to be hard. Keep it simple. Start where you are. Remember that data is a journey, and users are a huge part of that success.

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Make a big impact with analytics with a low-to-no budget

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You don’t need a huge budget to have a big impact with analytics. What you need is a good partner, who can help you put together a good plan, and then follow through with it. DI Squared isn’t just a data consultancy for engineering, migration, dashboarding – we're also an advisor to our clients on topics both big and small.

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Reach out to us for help with your data distribution strategy or user adoption obstacles. We’re here to listen and problem-solve alongside you.

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