Deciding to pull the plug on an Analytics Solution can be a difficult decision that many companies unduly postpone. When the technology solution can no longer support your business strategy, you must take action. For instance, your business may decide that becoming Data Driven is imperative to grow your revenues. Becoming data driven requires more people doing more analysis with more data in order to gain insights into the business that were previously unobtainable. If your current solution can’t support this business strategy, it is time to pull the plug on it.
Since IT investments are invariably expensive, all IT investments should be tied to a business strategy. Companies should fully understand the benefit to be gained and the costs to be incurred in the new solution. In the example of becoming data driven, if your IT infrastructure and users still rely heavily on exporting data to spreadsheets, your efforts to transform will fail. It’s simply impossible to achieve the future state by continuing to do more of what you have done in the past.
Change is always difficult, so at least two groups need to be consulted (or informed) before making the change. First, the analytics solution needs to have senior executive support. In the case of becoming data driven, that often is the result of an executive initiative anyway. The second group is the employees who use the old technology and who will be more resistant to the change. This group will need to know three things; why the new technology is important to the company, that they will be trained in the new solution (aka everything will be OK in the end), and that senior management is committed to the change.
Analytics solutions need to have a complete project plan which includes budgets, schedules, training, and someone to manage the process (a project manager). Usually, a phased transition will be more successful than a ‘big bang’ cutover.
Preferred Strategies specializes in helping customers advance in their Data Driven journey. Please contact us if you want to discuss how we can help you.
