What is Collaborative Analysis and Why Do Companies Need It?
Publié le 16 October 2023
See how to keep your business on the path to success by asking what is collaborative analysis and why do companies need it.
I’m not going to try to convince you about the importance of analytics in today’s data-driven business world – I’m sure you already know that!
That’s because we’re pretty imperfect as humans – we’ve all got biases and prejudices that impact our decision-making, so data analysis is a way to sidestep these issues. Using analytics will mean that we can be a bit more confident in our decisions that will help us meet our goals. This is true across organizations, with uses as varied as predicting future sales to gauging employee performance.
But everyone’s already using data analysis, so how can you stay ahead of the curve? Well, you should always be looking towards the newer trends in data science and analytics – and collaborative analysis is one of these innovative new ideas.
Rather than interpreting data on a department-by-department basis, collaborative analytics is about making sure that all of your information is pooled together, producing valuable and original insights that you wouldn’t otherwise find.
It’s widely accepted that encouraging teamwork across your organization is an important business practice – 72% of leaders said that good communication across a company led to increased productivity.
So why wouldn’t the benefits of collaboration extend to analytics? Read on to find out how you can make collaborative analysis work in your company.
What is collaborative analysis?
Data analysis is a great way for departments to make intelligent choices. Maybe your marketing team wants to review new video production techniques, so they use data to compare the productivity of each method. This will mean that, rather than just relying on human instinct, your teams can be sure that they’ve made the correct decision based on empirical data.
These insights are becoming increasingly invaluable to the modern workplace, with data analytics being built into more and more department-specific software.
Sure, this form of analysis is useful. But approaching analytics from a department perspective alone will mean that you miss out on a range of valuable data points and creative business insights.
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After all, organizations today are much more fluid and interconnected than they were in the past, with different teams and departments often working together and relying on each other. Even in a world of remote work, collaborative tools are built into software such as the Vonage VoIP phone system for business.
Collaborative analysis aims to reflect this reality when you produce business insights. Rather than using data sources from just one department, for example, it will enable you to draw from information across your business.
However, using a collaborative analytics model is not just about increasing the amount of data that fuels your insights. It’s also about expanding the range of stakeholders who are involved in analytics, meaning that your decision-making process will be able to benefit from the most competent and creative minds across your whole organization.
Collaborative analysis works in two directions. As well as allowing individual departments to improve their data insights through teamwork and improved datasets, it also allows dedicated analytics leaders in your organization to work with the relevant employees and teams to produce business insights that will benefit the whole organization.
Benefits of collaborative analytics
Moving to a model of collaborative analysis could mean that you make changes to a whole range of processes and software – changes that can be disruptive and expensive. So why are these changes worth any potential disruption? Here are some of the biggest benefits that collaborative analytics can bring to your organization:
- Build trust in analytics
You probably already appreciate the merit of data analysis – almost 92% of organizations found that they achieved value when they invested in data and analytics. However, achieving buy-in across your company can be difficult, especially when it comes to older employees who aren’t used to using analysis tools.
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When you approach analytics from a departmental perspective, this lack of buy-in and experience can leave certain teams unsure about how to use data effectively and usefully.
Using a collaborative model, however, will mean that every employee has consistent communication with your analytics experts or data engineers. They can be confident that they’re creating accurate insights and will also have a stronger appreciation for the value of these insights.
- Stop wasting data
Think for a moment about all of the data that your company has access to. This will usually include everything from personal information about employees and customers to detailed numbers and performance metrics of web pages, marketing materials, and apps.
Now think about how much of that data you actually use. For instance, resume and CV parsing is a good use of the data provided by your recruitment team but have you considered all the other ways in which recruitment can benefit from other data sources?
Collaborative analysis will expose departments to the huge range of data that lie outside of their specialisms, ensuring that less of your collected data will go to waste. The process of collaboration will also encourage more creative uses of data that would otherwise be deemed useless.
- Increase the number of data-driven decisions
Using collaborative analysis, however, is not just about finding innovative ways to use data. It will also make sure that you increase the overall number of decisions that are fuelled by data-driven insights in your organization.
One of the most obvious ways in which the number of data-driven decisions will increase is through the more widespread use of sophisticated analytics tools. Your data team might share useful software with other departments – and train them using Markup feedback sharing tips – allowing everyone to make data-led choices.
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With this increase in the amount of data-driven decisions, the quality of decision-making across your organization will improve almost overnight. Collaborative analysis is the best way to make sure that every employee feels empowered to use data and analytics in their everyday operations.
- Improve your time-to-insight
Of course, many companies might believe that enough of their decisions are already being led by data. However, adopting a collaborative analysis model will ensure that these decisions are reached more quickly.
This is because one of the practical consequences of using collaborative analysis is investing in specialized tools for collaboration and data analysis. In many organizations today, for instance, a marketer might have to ask data specialists for help when producing insights.
This can be a slow and unproductive process, with specialists often having to rely on tools such as a remote desktop app for mac when working with other employees. Instead, collaborative analysis will mean that all of your employees are able to access analytics software – decreasing the time that it takes to produce insights.
How to instill collaborative analysis in your organization
It’s clear that collaborative analysis is an important part of becoming a data-driven company. But how can you achieve this in your organization? Here are some key tips to keep in mind when developing your data analytics model.
- Establish a data-led mindset
Collaborative analysis depends on every single member of your company recognizing the enormous value and utility of data and analytics. In order to establish this sort of mindset, you should start with education – create a training program that allows every department to build their data literacy and discuss issues with your data specialists.
Encourage collaborative learning sessions where employees from various departments can share their knowledge and insights, fostering a culture of continuous improvement.
Once basic data literacy has been established, you can start to introduce simple measures such as KPIs as well as emphasizing benefits such as reduced workload. You’ll also want to tailor these messages to specific departments – a photo marketing specialist will want to know how data can be used to review images, for example.
- Locate the right software
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With 50% of employees wanting better digital collaborative tools, it’s important that you don’t replicate the failures of many other types of collaboration software when you’re looking for collaborative analytics tools. Ideally, the software that you use for data analytics would be able to be easily integrated into your existing collaboration tools.
You should also focus on the specific collaborative elements of each software. Can teams reuse datasets that are produced by others in your company, for instance?
You’ll also want to remember that collaborative analysis is all about making everyone in your organization able to produce data insights. This means that the UI should be intuitive and the software should be easy to understand without being a data specialist.
- Democratize data access
Finally, you’ll only be able to see the benefits of a collaborative analysis model of data analytics if everyone in your organization can actually access data from across your company.
This means that you’ll have to break down the silos that naturally build up and grant access to all of your teams. With this comes privacy issues – such as handling confidential information – so it’s important that some types of data are kept secure and that you’ve trained your employees to safely use potentially sensitive information.
Collaborative analysis – the future of data analytics
Can you remember the last time that your organization didn’t use data-driven analysis for any of its operations? It was probably a while ago, right? Data is central to pretty much every company today – so, if you want to stand out, you should start to look for innovation rather than the same old department-based analytics.
Moving forward with collaborative analytics is how you can find this innovation. Everyone appreciates being less rushed so being able to speed your company’s insights is invaluable, while everyone in your company will be able to produce data-driven decisions. On top of this, you’ll stop having data lying about for no reason.
Taken together, collaborative analytics will soon bring huge improvements to your company’s operations. So start reaching the future of data analytics today!
