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RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS

measured for its return on investment. Marketers now Eventually, data skills will become an important aspect
design targeted programs that reach out to specific au- of all job descriptions. And in that reality, organizations
diences. This is also evident with the growing number of will benefit from assessing employees and future hires
consumer insights and programmatic marketing compa- on these necessary skillsets as well. More than the
nies where data-informed marketing decisions make up technical skills, it will involve employees thinking criti-
a big part of their DNA. cally and having a positively curious attitude towards
data.
Just like the transformation of the marketing function,
data literacy should be a part of all conversations within We have seen companies across all industries, from
the business. With finance, marketing, sales and other manufacturing, to healthcare and even consumer
departments all having access to the same, relevant goods, benefit from a data-informed culture. For exam-
data, company-wide decisions will be better calculated ple, Playlab, a leading game developer and publisher,
and more aligned. Of course, this will only work if top uses self-service tools, across the company, to visual-
leadership sets a visible example. Senior executives ize and analyze their data. This has eventually enabled
should themselves be comfortable with using data and them to better understand their consumers, enhance
must model the analytic process and culture they want, game design and improve the planning of game levels,
across all business units. Top leadership needs to make now offering a better gaming experience for players.
sure that employees have access to data and can now
ask their own meaningful questions of the data. Research shows that the ability to make quicker, smart-
er, and more automated decisions and actions will in-
Empowering employees creasingly become a competitive advantage for busi-
nesses – this is something that business leaders can
Self-service analytics applications are also an essential no longer ignore. The key is having that top-down ap-
aspect of the self-sustaining feature of a successful an- proach where leadership shows the drive and the need
alytics culture. To ensure that these applications do not to transform the business into a data-driven organiza-
become ‘shelf-ware,’ they need to be easy to adopt and tion. To reap the maximum value from an organiza-
user-friendly enough for all workers, across divisions, to tion’s data, the leadership will need to drive the change
be able to use it – and not just the most software-savvy by having the right technology and the right people in
workers within the company. place, and foster a data-driven culture across lines of
business.◊
For the most part, getting all users to be truly data-
informed will require some training in the form of use
cases, online videos and more. It is essential to work By JY Pook,
with the business intelligence team to create a fail-safe Senior Vice President, APAC,
environment for self-service analytics within the organi- Tableau Software
zation so that the data-informed habit will come more
naturally to employees. This approach would normally
work better than a forced initiative passed down as cor-
porate directive from management. More importantly,
staff needs to see how self-service data analytics can As Tableau Software’s Senior Vice President of Asia
be a useful application that can help them with, rather Pacific region, JY is responsible for the territory’s over-
than hinder, their work. all business. He has close to 25 years of IT leadership
experience, with a track record in helping start-ups
People and data skills ramp up their businesses in Asia Pacific. He has had
successful stints serving as the region’s Managing Di-
rector/Vice-President for leading businesses such as
The right applications also need to be used by the right FICO, Business Objects, Onyx Software as well as
people in order for a company to make this transition. Graham Technology. In this current role at Tableau, JY
As such, top leadership needs to take this requirement leads a team of passionate team members in Asia Pa-
into consideration right from the onset. That is having cific responsible for building the region’s business, and
analytics as one of their key considerations when mak- more importantly helping customers obtain insights
from their data.
ing hiring decisions and discussions, as well as in the
development of HR processes. In fact, the lack of talent
in this aspect has been identified as one of the biggest
obstacles for organizations in Asia Pacific, presenting a
huge opportunity for companies to unlock even more
value from an analytics-savvy workforce.
M
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