Analytics and discovery

When you are building an analytics team or capability in an organization that has little to no experience with data and analytics, the expectation from many people, including executive management, will be that the analytics team will discover new insights about the business; this is not an unreasonable expectation.

Given the fact that you and your analytics team will be given the chance to look across much, if not all, of the organization, you will have access to nearly all the data available internally and externally, and you will have the goodwill and collaboration of a substantial number of sponsors and subject matter experts, as well as external partners and vendors, you and your team should be able to discover new insights.

This type of discovery-oriented analytical work is typically driven by the art of the possible. You can plan projects, but discoveries rarely show up when planned. Your team may find interesting insights a few days into the...