The Infinite loop of the dashboard and data insanity

Your team likely has access to plenty of meaningful analytics, but do you apply your data findings to make insight-driven decisions?

When you don’t act on your data, you waste resources, miss revenue opportunities, and decrease profitability. Yet many businesses continue to let data sit idly by without taking action.

• Nearly two-thirds (68%) of data is never used. Survey respondents identified the top barrier to using the data as “making collected data usable.” 
• And despite nearly all employees (87%) recognizing data as valuable, few use it to inform decision-making. 
• Only 25% of surveyed employees believe they can effectively use data.

Could you be doing more with your data? Let’s explore what actionable data means and what roadblocks may prevent you from unlocking its full potential.

What’s the difference between these two statements?

1. “Oh, cool dashboard. Yeah, that’s great to know.”

2. “Oh, okay. I understand what happened, why it happened, what our team needs to do, and the right people were engaged.”

In the first instance, you’ve delivered interesting data. It might be a beautiful dashboard, but it doesn’t prompt or take any action. Its impact probably starts and ends in that meeting.

The second instance is a perfect example of what actionable data is.

For over 20 years, dashboards have been a foundational element of business intelligence, helping data teams visualize and share valuable data across their organization. At inception, dashboards were perfect for delivering key reports, but much has changed over the last two decades, including the appetite and needs of your business users. 

Despite this objective, many users who come to Raia report that the reality is completely different. Users report that the lack of technical skills and resources needed to effectively use data to inform their decisions has a significant impact. 

As a result, over two-thirds (69%) of business leaders say a lack of data skills stops employees from using data effectively in decision-making. The result? Data ends up being misused — or not at all.

• Three-quarters (74%) of employees report feeling overwhelmed or unhappy when working with data, impacting their overall performance.
• 36% of surveyed employees state they will find an alternative method to complete a task without data.

Real-time insights are hard to obtain due to outdated or broken dashboards and distributed data​

VP of Product at Calendar Management Company

Dashboards have failed to deliver on the promise of a data-driven culture

Data is not a static object; it’s a living entity that is constantly changing.

Dashboards, on the other hand, are static and flat. They capture a distinct moment in time and then sit on the shelf, never to be seen again. Meanwhile, your data is becoming obsolete, and you are not driving any insights or actions out of it.

Additionally, dashboards are too rigid, slow, too generic, don’t take action, and still require people to “digest” the data presented to decide what to do, who to engage, and so on.

The Infinite loop of the dashboard and data insanity

Whenever users approach analysts for insight, they set off a chain reaction. And no matter how well the resulting dashboard may answer the user’s first question, it’s the next set of deeper questions that drive real action. It’s not enough to know what happened. Users must be able to dig in and understand the specifics of when, where, and why.

When they can’t, each additional follow-up question demands additional time and resources from your data team. This is where using legacy BI and dashboard tools starts to add up—and not in a good way.

Below is an estimate of the cost your team incurs when going through the motion above and trying to give users the insights they need using dashboards:

On top of the above, you still need to account for the time your team spends “digesting” the data presented in reports and dashboards, the time it takes to engage the team, explain the analysis, and decide which actions to take.

The bottom line is that the current approach for data analysis is expensive, time-consuming, and not well adopted by your organization, and your teams can’t leverage your data.

Time to take action

Recognizing these challenges, we developed Raia to transform the data analytics process. 

Raia works as a Data Assistant and automates routine data preparation, report creation, analysis tasks, and team engagement, drastically reducing the time spent on these activities, putting your data to use, and enabling every user in your organization to have access to data. 

With Raia, even your most non-technical users can instantly leverage natural language to answer their data questions.

By using Raia, your team can easily create Data Assistants that are connected to your internal data sources and:

1 – Talk to the Data Assistants on the web, Slack, or Teams, ask questions, and get insights based on your data. 

By leveraging this, you drastically reduce your team’s time waiting or searching for data, building new reports or dashboards, and going through the infinite loop of data insanity.

2 – Automate data processes, incorporate predictive analytics, and take action

A lot of the work performed by your team is repetitive, and Raia’s Data Assistant can take that off your team’s plate. Raia can take over these repetitive tasks, communicate with your team, and respond to users’ questions regarding its work results.

Not only that, but by leveraging Raia’s AI capabilities, your team can move from descriptive analytics (focusing on what happened) to predictive and prescriptive analytics (what will happen and how can we make something happen)

Teams using Raia have reported opportunities to reduce the time spent on answering data questions and building reports by up to 50%

Conclusion: Time for a Change

The inefficiency in traditional data analytics approaches is a problem too big to ignore. It’s time for your team to adopt solutions like Raia that address these challenges head-on. 

You can sign up and start for free at https://app.raia.live