The Value of Missing Data | Steen Rasmussen
Because digital analytics is not only about the website, it is a central part of an overall data strategy and when it comes to data strategy it is really about what you know and understand what you don’t know, and comparing this to what you need to know.
In most cases, we as analysts tend to only operate within the field of what we know or the data we currently have access to. We maintain this data set but only spend minimal resources on evolving it.
What you already track is basically what you have. What you see is what you get.
This madly limits our potential for increasing the value of the data for the organization since the focus is defensive in an attempt to ensure what we have and not offensively directed against what the business needs.
The main reason for this is often that we don’t know what the organization needs beyond what is already there. We try to answer any questions based on the current data set instead of looking at the relevance of the insights beyond what we currently hold.
In a lot of cases, the value of our insights should be open to external or nonexisting information since that is where opportunity should be found.
The data is not there.
Strategically it is however critical to understand the power to drive decisions with data and not just focus on the ones we already look at. In most scenarios, the data we have to begin with does not answer questions but only raises more. Did people leave the page because they were satisfied or dissatisfied, did they download because it was what they looked for, because they got sidetracked, or because it was the only thing they could find?
The questions in the answers.
By only observing the action, we miss the reason.
By only observing the same things, we miss the new things.
To go beyond this we need to strategically look beyond what we know and start to focus on what we need to know to grow the business. To focus at least some of our energy on pushing the data frontiers to be able to answer new questions instead of maintaining current insights.
In this sense, the job of the analyst is to push the boundaries of the data and explore new frontiers.
If the business wants to understand or be better in touch with a specific segment then we need to be able to identify them, if the business wants to improve the customer journey then we need to map it.
The objective of data is to ensure that the business can serve the users as efficiently as possible. it has no value on its own.
Therefore we also need to constantly re-evaluate the things we take for granted about the users and their data. Their motivations, behavior, and interests will change significantly over time and what has been true for the last 20 years might no longer be valid after tomorrow.
The data we work with represents people and people are not robots and hence driven to change.
About me:
Director of Data Innovation at IIH Nordic, Board Member, Community Builder & International Keynote Speaker- I Connect People, Data and Business Outcomes. With more than 20 years of experience, I’m on a mission to make people realize the importance of the business and commercial aspect of data.
I’m here on Medium to write and help people in Data, AI, Digital and Web analytics navigate better in their Journeys to make stuff happen.
