Data Capture & Collection
This situation of “wide-net” data capture without recourse can make your organization even more dependant on a third party while failing to see liabilities in what is being captured on behalf of your organization. If that third party is also reporting to you their performance, then “all data with no plan” can mean giving that individual or team the ability to omit certain variables, control for certain factors, and generally manipulate their apparent performance, like “P-hacking” of academic journal publications. The development of your organization’s data capture framework should be carefully planned and agreed to by all stakeholders before new data capture initiatives are implemented. This pre-determination will serve to enable specific and intentional data capture, disallowing manipulation, and enabling insight into previously opaque business processes and initiatives.
Information gathering with strategy serves as the foundation upon which your future Data Warehouse can be built. As with the actual foundation beneath the building you are in right now, you’ll always be able to look bad and be glad that you had the correct expertise on your team from planning to development.
Near the beginning of your organization’s data maturity, there can be a need for guidance as to what possibilities exist within the data you already have access to. At the same time, there is often a deep-seated uncertainty about what data could be available that has not yet been leveraged. While it wasn’t initially apparent, CAYK’s roots in development and technical optimization had uniquely positioned us to help you continue the process of envisioning and implementing new data capture systems.
Each piece of data captured not only has to abide by pertinent Privacy (PII) & Information handling laws but should be gathered intentionally, specifically contributing towards the target business outcomes that you are striving towards. Too many organizations, particularly those within the marketing sector while directing their clients, when first “testing the waters” in the data and analytics space will capture data with a shotgun “all-data-is-useful” approach. Secondary to the fact that some data cannot legally be captured, not immediately apparent is the fact that gathering too much irrelevant data can be just as bad as not gathering enough.