Analytics Value Chain

A journey to optimizing value from data.

COLLECT

Connect and integrate data sources from inside and outside the organization. Merge history with real-time updates to provide actionable insights, understood within the context of your business

DO YOU HAVE THE DATA YOU NEED?

In the absence of trustworthy and meaningful data, decisions are made on gut, or based on the simple premise of “that’s how we have always done it.” That’s no longer (and probably never was) a good strategy.

Are you capturing the data you need to provide the answers to the questions you face routinely? Consider the numerous events and transactions that occur in your organization daily and imagine the potential of this data asset.

DATA IS YOUR MOST VALUABLE COMMODITY

There is a loud and clear call to action for organizations to start treating data like the priceless and perishable resource it truly is.  Data is democratic – available to many or all competing in an industry. However, for those who can harvest, organize and apply it efficiently, it will be a competitive advantage.

SEAMLESS AND REAL-TIME ACCESS TO ANY AND ALL DATA

It is now well within the realm of possibilities for most organizations to develop strong competencies and leverage technology in support of a data driven decision-making culture.

Archetype partners with organizations of all sizes to develop the culture, select the right tools and deploy solutions.

PREPARE

Ensure a single version of truth, regardless of data type or source. Provide business users with the clean data they need for analytics, on a real-time basis.

CAN YOU RELY ON A SINGLE VERSION OF TRUTH?

One of the greatest obstacles to effective decision-making is the lack of a single version of truth. Conflicting data from disparate and siloed sources drives confusion and a propensity to distrust the system, source or team.

Aligning all data involved in decision making against common metrics and hierarchies is the beginning of effective organizational decision-making.

CONTENT, CONTEXT AND CLEANLINESS

Whether it’s financial data, operational data, BIG data or otherwise; it first has to be ‘good’. Cultivating good, useful data requires disciplines around data governance, master data (or hierarchy) management, data validation and reconciliation. And these disciplines need to be applied in a thorough and comprehensive process.

AN AUTOMATED, SCALABLE APPROACH

Archetype works with our clients to develop and deploy data management solutions that ensure that information workers are indeed working from a single version of truth. These solutions are designed to manage collection, loading, transformation, cleaning and validation in a consistent, automated and scalable way.

VISUALIZE

Picture your data. Enable your users to visualize their data and discover patterns, correlations and causality. Allow them to link data sources together in search of answers with real impact.

EMPLOYING THE RIGHT TOOLS?

The effective use of data and applied analytics is well recognized as a critical skill for most organizations today. Adoption of these tools however hasn’t been so easy.

Having the right tools can change the pace of adoption and even drive demand for analytics. Visualization tools integrated into existing workflows and applications can improve efficiency and engage teams in process improvement.

ANALYTICS IS THE COLISEUM OF THE MIND

As the disciplines of business and financial analysis have evolved, so too have the tools and techniques. Where software used to simply solve the problem of report creation and dissemination, it now supports the scientific endeavor of developing and testing hypotheses that impact decision-making at all levels. The best visualization tools enable their users to answer questions as fast as they are posed.

PERSPECTIVE DRIVES INSIGHT

Data alone does not improve decision-making. Archetype works to equip organizations with the RIGHT data at the right time, along with the tools and training necessary to gain and leverage perspective in the pursuit of insight.

A customized information strategy along with the right data, tools and training turns scorekeepers into business partners!

Describe

Report and analyze results within the context of the business to tell the story of what’s happening. Share evolving business trends with colleagues to align on actionable insights.

WHERE ARE WE?

This seems like a simple question to answer on the surface. However, for leaders in today’s organizations the answer can be complex and trusting your instinct can be dangerous.

Does your team have the training and tools to use data to tell stories that are actionable? Using data as a tool to accurately understand your current situation facilitates decision making, saves time, and reduces risk.

TELL THE STORY IN A COMMON LANGUAGE

The language of business performance is in some contexts universal; debits, credits, profits and losses. But every industry, function and department has its own language of success.

An organization’s ability to change direction and/or grow depends directly on its ability to communicate success or failure within and across teams.

DRIVE CONSENSUS AROUND RESULTS AND BUILD CONFIDENCE IN ANALYTICS

The best information workers do two things (among others) very well. Firstly, they can quickly use data to understand the state of the organization. Secondly, they translate results into actionable insights that can be understood and applied by their teams.

Archetype works with our clients to develop the language of performance and train teams on how to use data to communicate performance.

Diagnose

Tracking and sharing metrics to describe current status inevitably leads to a desire to understand what you are seeing, explore outliers, and identify root cause. Discover the missed opportunities and spot potential issues early.

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

Both success and failure can come in many different ways. Understanding root cause can mean the difference between ‘righting the ship’ or making a bad situation worse.

”If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything.” – R. Coase

Does your analytical platform help answer ‘why?’ Without integrating historical trends and underlying source data, how does one differentiate fact from opinion?

DEVELOP DATA DRIVEN DECISIONS

The job of the analyst is to develop and test hypotheses, cultivate a rational data set that tells a story and provide substance for decision-making.

Data driven decision making is empowered through strong data platforms with access to root cause, and simple, powerful tools in the hands of information workers.

ESTABLISH THE BUSINESS CASE FOR NEXT STEPS

Asking ’Why?’ three times, might well be one of the greatest business skills a leader can have. Answering what happened is helpful and gets to the beginning of root cause. But truly understanding ‘Why’ means that a business case for change can be made.

Knowing ‘Why’ is having the power to change the future.

Predict

Uncertainty paralyzes decision making and impedes progress in any organization. Leverage the information you have to forecast what will happen next.

WHERE ARE WE GOING?

Forecasting can be best described as using data as an offensive weapon. Yet, it remains the hardest job of any leader. More precisely, the hardest job leadership has is to prepare their organization not for one outcome, but for any outcome.

As soon as a forecast is completed, it is likely outdated. But, when organizations treat forecasting as a data driven discipline, it functions like a GPS, adjusting for surprises and hang ups along the way.

LEVERAGE MODELS AND DRIVERS

Data science leverages existing data to establish models that can help business users make sense of the past in a way that’s useful for the future. The more data that a business has access to and the faster the business environment changes, the more important the models become. The more drivers and systematic models are incorporated, the better the forecast.

UNDERSTAND THE FUTURE

The intuition of seasoned business leaders is powerful and valuable. But, even more so when information workers can develop multiple scenarios that model for a variety of potential outcomes.

Just like meteorologists, business planners are not in the business of telling the future, but more accurately, planning for potential outcomes. How’s your forecast accuracy?

Prescribe

Experience has served you well and now it is telling you to seek recommendations from an objective source. Employ advanced models and methodology to define and optimize appropriate courses of action.

WHAT SHOULD WE DO NEXT?

‘What should I do?’ is a loaded question. It may follow great news, such as winning the lottery, or bad news, such as a cancer diagnosis. But the answer that follows is hopefully grounded in wisdom and data.

The brass ring of data science today is its ability to leverage data, machine learning and artificial intelligence to provide a competitive advantage on the question of ‘now what?’

WEIGH POTENTIAL OUTCOMES

Risk and reward are rarely isolated from each other. As a result, business leaders labor to find the most favorable balance of risk and reward as they plan for growth or change.

Using models to ensure that this process is data driven, will ensure the best possible outcome.

DATA DRIVEN DECISION-MAKING

Data driven decision-making is why we are here. It is why Archetype exists; to help improve the process and foundation of decision-making through analytics.

And, its likely the reason you are reading this now. You aspire to improve your game.

Give us a call.

So What’s next?

Are You Ready?
Let’s Work!