As a data analyst, you might wonder if your data is driving the right insights for faster decision-making. You may feel the pinch to connect your data with a strong ROI.
You want to feel a sense of purpose and know you’re doing an excellent job at work. Still, if you struggle with your data’s workflow, you may find yourself repeating too many lines of SQL code or answering questions for data consumers instead of working on high-value problems.
If so, you’re not alone.
According to the Databox 2023 State of Business Reporting:
Almost two-thirds of respondents said that modifying dashboards or running new analyses in a business intelligence tool is typically required for them to complete their reporting process.
They download spreadsheets or enter data, run analysis, and write up conclusions and recommendations. Over 50% of the respondents said they use nine different tools to create reports.
There’s Got to Be a Better Way to Reuse SQL Code
How many times have you quickly thrown together a query, thinking you’ll never need it again, only to have your boss or a customer ask for the same analysis again weeks later? How do you find those parameters again? How do you ensure you’re going to deliver consistent results without wasting hours of your time on tracing back your own steps?
If you’re like us, you’ve put a ‘factor’ or recalculation on some measure simply going off your intuition. After all, your gut feelings have been honed by your deep knowledge of your business and the data behind it. But how do you begin to add those ineffable ‘factors’ back into the updated analysis?
Worse yet, let’s say that you’ve been asked to repeat an analysis that was originally put together by someone who has now left the team. How do you deliver the same results as before?
Most analysts use an enhanced SQL dev workspace to do their best work. But the challenge is often there is no way to manage and share important SQL code without losing the context of those results across your team.
That means your developers spend a lot of time rewriting code from scratch that they could repurpose if it were available to them.
Fortunately, there is a solution.
Why You Need Collaborative Analytics
The right collaborative analytics tool can provide a contextual data and analytics catalog with modularized, reusable SQL code. That way, when devs see the code, they know its use case. Repurposing repetitive code frees up your data team to devote more energy to high-value, creative, problem-solving code instead of repetitive tasks.
Another benefit of collaborative analytics tools is accessibility and accuracy. How much time could you save if your data users could find what they needed without tapping the data team on the shoulder for help?
That’s the power of collaborative analytics. Now that you have the right tool, you can frame it for your boss in terms they’ll understand.
Key Points Covered
- Arguments to include in your “highlight reel” so your boss understands why you need a collaborative analytics tool to work efficiently.
- Benefits of collaborative analytics tools that double efficiency and have the added benefit of boosting morale.
- Template with sample sentences that you can adapt to get your boss’s buy-in.
How to “Sell” New Software to Your Boss
Remind your boss of data’s big promise. That promise was you’d have access to all the data and know what your customers did, when, and why. It was supposed to serve insights on a silver platter so the entire org could use those insights to make more strategic decisions that move the needle.
Yet, we all understand the problem of unclear, inaccessible, or incomplete data. You can’t do your best work under such conditions.
Acknowledge your boss wants to provide you with the best tools to build, manage, and deliver data and analytic results.
Share an example of your problem(s), e.g., “our current tools make it difficult to find and reuse code which means we end up recreating it. Duplicating this work not only takes hours but is also tedious and brings down morale because the team doesn’t get to work on creative problem-solving tasks that can move the needle business-wise.
Compare Your Current Tools
For example, are you wrangling spreadsheets in the hopes of making them do things they were never meant to do? Or does your data warehouse feel more like a jumbled closet than a well-curated collections storage? What if you could efficiently bridge the gap between your data warehouse and your data catalog? Imagine your devs easily finding and repurposing SQL code and data users finding the answers they need themselves without peppering the data team with messages.
Cost of compute – Writing code is an iterative process; devs often have to execute queries over and over again to ensure the expected results. With defined and consistent data and analytic products/sets, you can reduce compute costs.
That’s all possible with the right collaborative tool, as you know.
To help you make the case to your boss, here’s an example of a “buy-in” letter you can adapt.
Template for Convincing Your Boss to Buy in on Collaborative Data Analytics Software
You can adapt this to your circumstances and make a compelling case for approving a collaborative analytics tool for your team.
Share a Related Challenge:
Our current process makes it difficult to find and reuse SQL scripts, and the team ends up duplicating work. Not only does this take hours, but it also brings down team morale because they don’t have time to work on high-value code that could deliver greater ROI.
Explain the Value:
There’s a tool called Coginiti that integrates with [the data platform you use] and at a minimum saves other data teams ten or more hours a week. Some users say it’s even doubled their productivity because they spend less time troubleshooting and they can update code once and use it in several other analyses.
They can easily find and reuse SQL code thanks to powerful contextual search capabilities. This means they don’t have to write SQL code on an ad-hoc, one-off basis, and the team can spend more time on high-impact code to solve [key problem your team faces.]
There’s another hidden benefit too. Since the dev team knows their code will be seen and re-used by others, they make an extra effort to deliver their best code.
In all, this type of collaboration boosts efficiency and team engagement. Plus, our team will be proud of their work.
Remind Your Boss of a Recent or Current Business Challenge the Right Data Can Help Solve:
Remember that [challenge]? With this tool, we could have solved that in a fraction of the time. [Or, maybe it wouldn’t have been a challenge at all if you’d had access to the right data at the right time.]
Share a Testimonial From a Happy Coginiti User:
In short, a collaborative analytics tool like Coginiti frees up time, so our team can do their best work and feel like valued contributors. Zeina Meng said Coginiti Premium doubled her productivity. ‘The efficiency we got from Coginiti Premium was mind blowing. I’ll say it’s more than 100%, and that’s a conservative measurement. At the end of the day, I want to feel good about who I am and what I do, and Coginiti Premium is a big part of that.’
Ask for Support from the Boss:
Based on my research and the results other teams are experiencing once they implement collaborative analytics, I’m asking for your support and agreement to take a look at Coginiti and how they can help us become more productive. Let me recommend arranging a discovery call with their team to learn more about the results Coginiti is delivering and answer our team’s questions.
Forget About Wasted Time with Collaborative Analytics
Today, we’ve equipped you with the arguments and statements you need to convince your boss, once and for all, to invest in collaborative analytics software for you and the rest of your data team.
Go on and adapt our template to make sure that your boss will be as ecstatic about your new data tool as you are.
