From Tickets to Trust... How Clarisights Enables Collaboration Between Data Teams and Performance Marketers

Key points in this article:

• Data Teams want to drive data-led decision-making. They want to become creators of business change.
• But! They are hamstrung because they are asked to support both high-volatility low-impact data users and high business-impact but low-volatility data users.  
• Faced with an unreliable tech stack, Data Teams can become paranoid that business users will end up breaking things. As more and more restrictions are placed on business users, Data Teams now have no option but to make and maintain the reports and dashboards themselves. The Data Team turn into gatekeepers.
• This damages the relationship between Data Team and Marketers.
• With Clarisights, the relationship between Data Teams and Performance Marketers is transformed! We believe workplaces should be collaborative and inspiring and not filled with drudgery.

When approaching companies to present Clarisights, we are often unsure how Data Teams will react to Clarisights but it is safe to say that our best customers have been cases where Data Teams were active partners. It is for this reason we take feedback from Data Team extremely seriously. A common bit of feedback we get from Data Teams is Clarisights is not needed because there are existing systems that do the same job.

This is a much more complex response than it first looks. So let’s unpack this and make a case for why Data Teams should welcome Clarisights into their organizations.

Data Teams: Creators versus Curators

This post on Reddit from nine months ago is a great place to start. It captures a common frustration that Data Teams struggle with: "How can we get to work with real data science?"

Data Teams usually comprise of really smart, capable and ambitious people. For them data is just a means to an end. What they really aspire to is to drive data-led decision-making. They want to become creators of business change.

Instead, they end up becoming curators of data. They might spend all day ferrying data from place to place, responding to data queries and generating dozens of reports for teams... Understandably, they get bored out of their minds. It’s not what data teams signed up for.

In fact, their relationship with data is often turned on its head—rather than being data enablers these teams end up becoming data gatekeepers.

Why does his happen?

To understand this recurring pattern, we have to look at business data through two vectors: Volatility and impact.

Data volatility refers to the speed and volume with which data is received, processed, analyzed and responded to. Data impact refers to the impact this data has on the broader business.

The crucial thing to remember is that not all data is created equally.

Where data streams fall on the volatility-impact spectrum has huge implications for the tools you use, the people who use them, and the workflows that emerges from these tool-team combinations.

Marketing data, for instance, is a classic example of high-volatility, low-impact data that flow into the organization in a non-stop hosepipe of information that must then be sliced, diced and optimized on a constant basis. This kind of data is approached tactically.

On the other hand, Business Forecasting, Prediction Modelling, Revenue Metrics and Attribution Models are all data models with high business-impact but low volatility. Organizations usually update, change and refine these models with patience, caution and consideration. This is the kind of data and data problems, that Data Teams and BI Teams love working on. This kind of data is approached more carefully and philosophically.

The greatest source of frustration for most data teams is when organizations are unable to maintain separation between these two different kinds of data.

And the reason behind this is simple: Inadequate tooling and bad processes. This has a huge, detrimental impact on Data Teams something we could call 'monkeyfication'.

Monkeyfication: What it is and why it sucks for everybody

Monkeyfication happens when Data Teams are expected to care for both kinds of data. In practice this means the same team is expected to support both high-volatility, low-impact data and high business-impact but low volatility data use cases and data users.

At some level, there is a certain logic to this approach. After all, a Data Team is a data team. They should be supporting data use anywhere and everywhere in an organisation!

But the reality is that both kinds of data require two entirely different approaches.

Most Data Teams are built to cater to high business-impact but low volatility data. These are the data problems that they love working on: Complex, intricate, business-first data problems with medium to long term solutions that require intellectual investment. A great Business Forecast, Attribution Model or Prediction Model is not only challenging to build, but can also deliver outsized business returns. These are exactly the kind of projects and returns that Data Teams like to be measured against.

Yet, the moment you ask them to cater to the high-volatility, low-impact data as well... see the Reddit post above. High-volatility, low-impact data problems are messy. They involve piping data through to dozens, if not hundreds, of teams and operators, all of whom are looking to make frequent, small optimizations to dozens of levers. Every stage of this process is fraught with challenges, especially if your reporting stack is sub-optimal.

Consider the data stack for a large Performance Marketing team. From data channels to data warehouse, to the reporting tool, the stack has so many elements that are brittle and prone to damage. As organisations grow, things only get even more brittle. Meanwhile, business teams have a non-stop appetite for data. They know that making the most of this data involved playing with it constantly in the hope of generating Eureka moments.

A brittle data stack and business teams with a voracious appetite for data can cause huge issues in the workplace.

The Data Team turns into a team of gatekeepers. Faced with an unreliable tech stack, they quickly become paranoid that business users will end up breaking things. Or that business users will look at the wrong things and carry out the wrong operations. This means Data Teams start to control access to the streams of data flowing into the stack.

The Data Team turns into report monkeys. As more and more restrictions are placed on business users, Data Teams now have no option but to make and maintain the reports and dashboards themselves. This is fine when data is high business-impact but low volatility, where things change slowly and carefully. But with high-volatility, low-impact data things are different. Here Business Users are constantly seeking to make a hundred optimizations a day. Which means Data Teams get swamped with requests and tickets. Soon marketers are waiting for weeks for new insights.

Reporting turns into a zero-sum game. Soon business and data teams are permanently entrenched against each other. While the business wants flexibility and speed, data teams are more worried about security and stability. This is why so many business teams start working around their data teams and start going back to spreadsheets for their reporting needs. Meanwhile, Data Teams are preparing their CVs!

So how do large, complex organizations avoid this monkeyification?

Clarisights can help build a new relationship between Data Teams and Business Teams. A relationship that is built on trust, not tickets.

The answer is the right tooling.

Vertical Reporting Platforms: From Tickets To Trust

What if your business users had access to a single, self-service, reporting platform that offered both high data velocity and reliable data governance? Where Data Teams can periodically go in and set access controls, observe metrics and dimensions, and audit reporting practises?

This is where the SaaS Frontier comes into the picture.

Today, a new generation of SaaS reporting platforms, designed to cater to the demands of highly volatile but low impact data users, can help build a new relationship between Data Teams and Business Teams. A relationship that is built on trust, not tickets.

As organizations grow and their data needs get more complex, they slowly cross the SaaS Frontier and enter a stage where SaaS platforms can better provide the tools they need to manage high-volatility, low-impact data streams. And all this without frustrating their Data Teams. With Vertical Solutions business users no longer have to compromise with generalist options.

This is exactly what Clarisights does for hyperscale Performance Marketing teams. With our end-to-end SaaS reporting platform, we provide a sandbox for Marketers to actually enjoy playing with their data. Sometimes Marketers won't know exactly what they are looking for. But with our fast, friendly interface they can play around with metrics and filters until all their information turns into insight.

All this without sending a steady stream of tickets to their Data Team.

In fact, we've consistently seen Clarisights fundamentally change two things for our customers:

First, it transforms the relationship between Data Teams and Marketers. With the right tooling in place to take care of their daily needs, Marketers now have much more substantial questions for their Data Teams: How can we do better forecasting? Do you have any macro-level insights that we can use in marketing decision-making? Should we enter into new untapped markets?

These are the questions Data Teams love answering. This is why most of your data folks signed up for the job in the first place.

Second, Data Teams can now focus on doing real high-quality work. With a reliable SaaS platform taking care of all the grunt work, Data Teams are transformed from a tactical team that fiddles with reports and metrics, into a strategic asset that can make a real business impact.

This is why modern SaaS platforms like Clarisights are a boon to Data Teams. Rather than seeing us a threat or a challenge to their authority, they should approach us as a powerful tool that brings renewed focus and direction to their Data work.

Clarisights can transform the relationship between Data Teams and Performance Marketers. We want workplaces to be collaborative and inspiring and not filled with drudgery! We believe that with the right tooling and the right process everyone can be happy 🙂

If you can relate to this issues outlined in this article, click here for a demo, here if you want to read more about us and here if you’re interested in joining the team.