Insights based on key performance indicators (KPIs) and other key metrics inherently engender a sense of urgency that other data won’t.
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If you don’t know how to react to a particular metric when it significantly increases or decreases, you might be looking at an unnecessary vanity metric. When an insight is closely tied to your key business goals and strategic initiatives, it’s more likely to drive action. Please consider the following six attributes when examining how actionable your data insights are: I refuse to surrender the term “actionable insight” to becoming just another hollow, meaningless buzzword. For this reason, I’d like to examine more closely what makes an insight truly actionable. Maximizing the actionable insights you receive from your analytics investments is important to your data-driven success. They are the highly treasured output of all the work that goes into collecting, preparing and analyzing your data.
An insight that drives action is typically more valuable than one that simply answers a question-especially an insight that makes you rethink something and pushes you in a new direction. I was on spring break vacation with my family, and I can’t spend every day walking around Disneyland-that’s not realistic or actionable for me.Īctionable insights sit at the apex of your data pyramid. Unfortunately, while it’s an interesting data point, it was a short-lived aberration or outlier. Whatever I did on that day I should probably just replicate the same behavior all the time. For example, you’ll notice on the chart above that I was very active on the previous Friday (18K steps!). You may not know what to do with some insights and choose to ignore them. While we’re happy to obtain as many insights as possible from our data, not all of the takeaways will be actionable. When I analyze this trended information I can see my current trajectory is ahead of what I accomplished the past few days and with a little extra effort in the evening I can reach my daily target ( insight: I only need 2,558 more steps in next 5 hours). My Fitbit app includes a number of data tables and visualizations ( information) such as a weekly steps report where I can see how many steps I completed each day. This single fact is fairly useless, especially without more context. At this moment, my watch says I’ve taken 7,442 steps today. In order to better understand what actionable insights are, it’s important to understand the subtle differences between these key analytics terms.Īs an example, my Fitbit watch gives me all kinds of activity data: steps, BPM (heart beats per minute), miles, calories and so on. There’s actually a hierarchy pyramid with data at the foundation, information in the middle and insights at the pinnacle. Data, information and insights are not synonyms. Often what is really being offered by many analytics solutions is just more data or information-not insights.
While the promise of actionable insights is alluring, I’m concerned that the phrase is fast becoming an empty buzzword as it is being overly misused by technology marketers. Actionable insights appear to be the missing link for companies that want to drive business outcomes from their data. Forrester reports 74% of firms say they want to be “data-driven,” but only 29% are actually successful at connecting analytics to action. With many companies struggling to make sense of their data and create value with their big data investments, the promise of actionable insights sounds wonderful. If you’ve read the marketing collateral from any analytics or business intelligence vendor, you’ve no doubt come across the phrase “actionable insights.” Every analytics or business intelligence solution promises to unlock a tidal wave of them for your business-maybe even in “real-time” if you’re lucky.
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