In September the Konnexus team not only had the opportunity to supply the coffee cart at the CDAO event in Melbourne, but also was able to speak to and listen to some of the great presentations held by the leaders in data.
Our key takeaways from the event: –
- We have some amazing data professionals in the industry who are clearly passionate about what they do
- Data is evolving and ever-changing
- AI should be encouraged and integrated into businesses as long as there is an AI strategy which includes empowerment and training of employees
- Data governance is a critical topic for all businesses and in consideration of this, the focus should be on value-driven data governance and strategic alliance
- Data needs to be strategic with a long-term focus from leadership
- Driving change can be difficult especially when you are trying to target cross functional c -suite level or executives who are more senior than you. The best way to have an influence and start to build a data culture is to build strong relationships with all the cross functional peers at your level and create awareness. This will get buy in from them on what you are doing, and this will naturally filter through. Your relationships should not just extend to those who you work with but even peers who you don’t directly work with, as those relationships can really assist when the time comes
- Often trying to implement and drive data enabled decision making can fail, ways to ensure the processes are being adopted are to curate courses that help your employees understand and learn, ask them for feedback on how they are finding the new processes as this can help you make any changes. Another thing to think about is how have you communicated the change, have they understood, do they see the benefits? You may need to get industry and domain specialists to sometimes do this so they can relate the change to each part of the business
- Find common themes of how data is collected between the parts of the business and link this back to the foundational aspects of your data strategy, this improves reusability, and you can further invest in the efforts of the collection of data
- There are a huge variety of different tools and technologies available in the market that can make the role of a data professional much more efficient
- All data leaders are experiencing somewhat the same challenges, just within different industry environments
- If you are a Data Analyst – your ability to story tell should be of utmost importance
- One of the biggest challenges within an analytics environment, will always be the ability to get stakeholders engaged and get their buy in when it comes to a data initiative or project.
- Improving data literacy is a key step in growing a data driven environment
The Konnexus Team
