3.16.2 Business Data Analytics Perspective

Stakeholder analysis tools are highly beneficial in ensuring proactive and effective communication and engagement with stakeholders during a data initiative. Stakeholder analysis includes:

• Identifying all stakeholders that have a relationship to the data initiative in some capacity.
• Developing understanding of diverse needs, conflicting perspectives, vested interests, and underlying biases to help facilitate conversations towards a shared goal.
• Knowing each stakeholder's knowledge of data analytics.
• Customizing communication methods across different stakeholders or stakeholder groups by ensuring that the right information and right level of information is shared at the right time through the most effective communication channels.
• Determining involvement in various engagements depending on their background, expertise, and vested interests.

Listing and outlining each stakeholder and stakeholder group with pertinent communication details helps the team determine how best to communicate and engage stakeholders.

.1    Identifying the Research Question

The team works with key stakeholders to accurately define the business problem or opportunity. Identifying impacted stakeholders and their implicit and explicit needs is a precursor to this work. Understanding stakeholders' perspective of the current state, their vested interests, and inherent biases, as well as their knowledge of data analytics provides a holistic and deeper understanding of the context.

Stakeholder analysis provides the team with important information, particularly when facilitating a diverse set of stakeholders with conflicting needs. Documenting this information within stakeholder lists, maps, or personas also prove beneficial in subsequent domains when stakeholder communication and engagement needs to be expertly executed.

This work provides a strong foundation for identifying and formulating high quality questions that will be answered through the data analytics effort.

.2    Source Data

In data initiatives that span multiple functional units, there may be a diverse set of data sources and tools leveraged that will then need to be integrated into a single solution. As part of assessing current state, the analytics team identifies how stakeholders consume and generate data using Stakeholder List, Map, and Personas. These consumption patterns help identify the form and function of the data that is utilized in the analytics initiative.

.3    Analyze Data

Descriptive and diagnostic analyses are valuable in revealing what has happened in the past and why. They also provide clues of future trends if the context remains stable. Predictive and prescriptive analyses are highly influential and powerful for decision-making as they reveal possible trends and outcomes that may result under diverse situations, sets of conditions, or alternate decision paths. Stakeholder List, Map, or Personas is used to ensure the analysis work is focused on the topics and issues that are most important to key stakeholders while aligning with the goals of this work.

.4    Interpret and Report Results

Stakeholder List, Map, or Personas helps the team plan and determine communication strategies for key stakeholders. While the key messages and insights remain the same, there are various factors to consider including:

• Preferred type of communication: Do stakeholders prefer in-person presentations where constructive discussions can take place? Is more passive communication preferred, for example, dashboards accessible online?
• Information to be included and the level of detail: Thought is given to what information should be included. For example, the narrative in a dashboard for a senior executive team may be limited to key highlights and insights, while for a business team there might be more detailed rationale for the results.
• Type of visualization: It is important to identify the most appropriate visuals for the intended audience depending on their comfort level. The use of rich visuals is recommended, but some visuals may be highly technical or perceived complicated for certain audiences.
• Formality: Some stakeholders may prefer results are shared as less structured with a less formal tone, while others may prefer a more formal tone with a structured meeting format to review important insights.
• Timing and the frequency of communication: Timing depends on the urgency of need for the data results. Frequency depends on the purpose for data tracking. Understanding stakeholders helps the team determine the right balance for sharing insights.

.5    Use Results to Influence Business Decision-Making

The analytics team understands the business challenge to be addressed, forms quality research questions, consolidates the appropriate source data, analyzes the data, interprets the results of that analysis to create important insights, and reports their findings. However, their work is not yet complete. The final goal is to see those insights and their evidence-based recommendations used to support business decision-making.

Understanding key stakeholders using Stakeholder List, Map, or Personas increases the probability that the team's recommendations are used responsibly and productively. If the results reveal a clear pattern, and insights are backed by data-based evidence, conclusive recommendations can be made. On the other hand, where no definitive patterns were identified or insights were inconclusive or contrary to what was expected, a consensus needs to be reached on how to move forward. The type of analysis used to draw key insights and how the results are communicated have an influence on the decisions made by stakeholders.

.6    Guide Organization-Level Strategy for Business Analytics

Stakeholder List, Map, or Personas does not have a significant role in the Guide Organization-Level Strategy for Business Analytics domain. However, completing stakeholder analysis helps the analytics team navigate organizational needs for data and information.