The way that we’ll succeed at Nokia is to create a culture that treats data as our most critical asset. The keys to making this happen are executive support, evangelism, and collaboration. I don’t have technology at the top of this list because that part comes easy to people at Nokia.
We have many smart, technical people at Nokia who have used open source tools to download data and create information silos. However, we have to stop creating these silos if we want to achieve our vision of ‘smart data’. We have an executive leader who believes that ‘smart data’ is Nokia’s differentiator going forward, and he makes it clear that data silos are no longer an acceptable way of doing business. The goal is a single, unified data asset.
Since executive mandates alone do not ensure successful change, we also need evangelism to ensure analytical success. Our key executive sponsor highlights ‘smart data’ stories at internal employee events, customer meetings, and industry keynotes. Internally, we document and publish these success stories to remind employees about the importance of analytical projects.
And the third key to our analytical success is collaboration. Although we have a centralized analytics group responsible for building the technology ecosystem and shared data asset, we rely on subject matter experts in each business group to develop analytical applications and services to drive our smart data initiative.
This is an excerpt from the book, “Secrets of Analytical Leaders: Insights from Information Insiders,” by Wayne Eckerson. To read more from the book, click here.
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Wayne Eckerson Founder and Principal Consultant for BI Leader Consulting, which provides advisory services to user and vendor organizations in the areas of data warehousing, BI, performance management and business analytics. Eckerson is a veteran thought leader in the business intelligence field who is a noted speaker, blogger, and consultant and author of several books and many in-depth reports. He can be reached at: weckerson@bileader.com
