The most valuable people in your organization combine business acumen with data savviness. But these data heroes are rare. Denise McInerney describes how she has empowered business users at her company to make better decisions with data and explains how you can do the same thing in your organization. Businesses are only as good as the best decisions they make. The business users who drive these decisions are all working to make the best decisions they can. Having access to the right data, in the right way, can propel these business experts in the right direction, and equip them to make decisions that will make the business successful.

1. Empowering Business
Users to LeadWith Data
Denise McInerney
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2. About Me
• Working with data since 1996
• From DBA to Analyst to Data
Architect
• Active inTech Community
• VP of Marketing for PASS
• WIT
@denisemc06
www.linkedin.com/in/denisemcinerney
Tech Women @ Intuit
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3. Goals forToday
• What does it mean to empower business users with data?
• How can it be done?
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4. WhenYou Get it Right
• Business users desperate for data
• Knew the questions, needed the answers
• What is the customer retention rate?
• What is the elapsed time between orders?
• How many new & reorders resulted from each
marketing campaign?
• CreatedAnalytics Solution
• Access to the data, easily consumable (Excel)
• Became a feature of every business review
• Transformed how they did their jobs
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5. How Can We DoThis?
Customer First
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6. Empowering Data Heroes
•Business Smart + Data
Savvy
•Provide data & tools to
maximize effectiveness
•Enable them to make
best decisions they can
How I can
maximize the
average order size
for each state?
SELECT State,
AVG(order_total)
FROM order_table
GROUP BY State
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7. Business-Back
•Start from the users’ point-of-view
• Walk a mile in their shoes
• Use the access available to you
• Don’t assume you know what they need
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8. The Dog Wags theTail
•Solving problems FOR the organization
WITH technology
• Business users are the experts in the business
• Engineers & IT are the experts in the tech
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9. Take theTripTogether…
•Start wherever the organization is
•Communication
• Seek to understand
• Describe your vision
• Don’t try to dazzle with tech
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10. …Every Step of theWay
• Customers are part of
• Requirements
• Implementation
• Testing
• They know the data better
• Methods
• User council
• Scrum teams
• Office Hours
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11. WhatWas the Question Again?
• Clear, Squishy or Undefined?
• We need to understand and handle all of these
• Understand the tolerance for inaccuracy,
latency
• Being Agile
• Get comfortable with ambiguity & change
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12. H0w Can We DoThis?
TechTalk
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13. Consider theTech Options
•Understand the goals, then pick
the tech
• Or use what you have
•Many possible paths to success
•Make the most of your expertise
to solve the problem
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14. Don’t Be a Snob
• Software is a tool
• What matters most is getting the job done
• Analysts are spreadsheet wizards
• Variety of good answers,
• Pay attention to the market
• Choose the best for your situation
• Don’t let it interfere with reaching the goal
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15. Implementation Approach
• Modeling
• Combination of BigVision & small bites
• Establish standards and patterns
• Don’t get too attached to an idea
• Be prepared for change
• User feedback means adoption
• Listen to the engineers
• Be one with your technology
• Leverage its strengths
• Don’t fight with it
• Don’t over-engineer or under-engineer
©Scott Adams, Inc
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16. Being Agile
• Get toValue Faster
• Adapt
• Agile methods for data projects
• Make data projects agile-friendly
• Iterative Design
• Rely on your established patterns
• Refactoring is a reality
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17. Accuracy
• The answer has to be within tolerance
• Apply Engineering Rigor
• Testing,Validation
• User Acceptance
• Deserves as much as any other software
• Data can be tricky
• Just because you don’t get an error doesn’t
mean your answer is right
• Anomaly Detection
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18. ThereWhen it’s Needed
• Just like any other production system
• Uptime
• Stability
• Performance
• Scalability
• SLAs
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19. WhenYou Get It Right Again
• Dozens of sources, dozens of steps
• Manual work
• Upload/copy-paste
• Figured out how to automate it all
and fit it together
• Expand the reach to others in the
business
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20. Wrapping Up
• Combine business acumen with
technology
• Remember which comes first
• Communication & Involvement
• Be Smart About theTech
• Access to the right data in a
timely way
• Business will come to rely on it
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21. Q & A
Send Feedback
@denisemc06
denise_mcinerney@intuit.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/denisemcinerney
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