Data: words alone are not enough

In their first article, Charles Mayo and Sophie Adams Bhatti talked – in words alone - about the power and importance of harnessing data to enable greater Board effectiveness. In part two of that article Simon Elliott, Joseph White and Joy Bradley illustrate how effective data visualisation techniques are in bringing to the fore the most important trends and patterns, for taking complex information and making it quick to assess and act on.

To view a live interactive version of this example, click here. For a walk through of the visualisation, click the information icon after the visualisation has loaded.

Data devoid of a context is pointless, it must speak to something - a policy or regulatory problem that matters. In this example we draw on our experience of the Environment Social Governance (ESG) framework. Growing in importance, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the resulting ESG framework are vital to the long-term success of business. However, information is invariably scarce, subjective, ad hoc, lacking in transparency and complex - meaning that the role of the Board in setting an informed strategy and managing the success of this is incredibly difficult. This is set against the backdrop of increasing regulatory pressure, which is likely to see softer measures gradually harden, meaning that having a deep and thorough understanding of the success, or otherwise, of attempts to take responsible action on ESG factors is becoming more important by the day.

To make data work more effectively for you and your business, here are a few tips we would like to share:

1. Relevance: Have a clear idea of which metrics related to which factors are most relevant to your business. Doing so might take longer, but it brings with it the rewards of a deeper, more meaningful understanding.

2. Data gaps: Understand what data you have now and what data you will need in order to build an effective strategy. Going from zero to hero in one step is unlikely to be possible, so build a roadmap to help you get there.

3. Data and strategy: Build a data architecture which speaks to this strategy and vision. An investment in time now will reap rewards in the longer term - keeping the strategy on track is as important as setting the vision in the first place.

4. Systemised: Set your goals and start to collect and harvest the data - but do so using methodologies which rely more on repeatable automated processes. Ad hoc exercises are slow, prone to errors, time consuming, not easily repeatable or auditable. A truly engaged data driven approach can alleviate all these pain points. Think repeatable not bespoke.

5. Quality: Make sure that the data has sufficient quality – bad data in = bad information out. Quality is key, say no to bad data!

6. Data into knowledge: Think about data visualisation techniques which help turn those data points into real, consumable knowledge. Investing in data architecture, data science and analysis are all wise ways of strengthening insights, but all these efforts are pointless if the results and insights are lost in reams of unrefined analysis, pages of tables, or just a narrative.

Take our 6 handy tips and see what a data driven, policy derived approach can do for you.

See our previous article here.