Too often insights get overlooked. We look to reports and analytics for answers, forgetting they are garnered when we dig a step deeper into the analytics – the insights are the answers we seek. Think of it as a funnel; at the top sits a mass of data, we make sense of data through reports. Then a layer of analytics starts to identify the good stuff; the stuff that raises eyebrows and questions. Delving deeper gives you answers and information you need to take action.
But what sets an insight and golden nugget apart? Let's say you get 10 actionable insights from troubleshooting your unified communications in a month – it's likely only one of them holds the key – or trigger – to a big opportunity or threat. This is a golden nugget.
How do you turn these insights into golden nuggets? Firstly, appreciate not every insight is a golden nugget – the use of the word golden indicates value, so unless an insight has a large monetary impact it won't be considered golden. Your CEO's attention is valuable – don't waste it. But when you find an insight worthy of destruction or glory; polish it, treat it with care and find out every implication it could have. Do your homework and share your find. Be prepared to offer an action plan on how best to deal with it – or better still – how you dealt with it for the better good of the company. Clearly illustrate the impact of actions taken off the back of the golden nugget discovery. For example, showcase the productivity gained in a monetary value, or the financial savings made, or the potential future earnings – these will all pique the interest of the C-Suite.
We sat down with a member of our team familiar with insights and analytics, and picked his brain on the topic: Here's what Kevin had to say on the golden nuggets uncovered in the UC environment.
Analytics is a collection of data whereas insights are the pieces that we pull out of the data that are actionable. It's something you can do something about, it's interpreted and is something you can utilize and help your business with.
Analytics by themselves are just a bunch of data, someone at the C-Level wants to take action. They need the information that's actionable and insights gives them exactly that.
People at the C-Level are responsible for running the business and organizations need unified communications to run their business. Without being able to communicate and better collaborate they are not going to be able to manage their business successfully. When those are down it can be devastating, whether direct or indirect. For example if a contact center's UC goes down, 9 times out of 10 it's going to be revenue impacting.
And what the C-Level want to find out about are those pieces of information that may take the business or unified communications down; the nuggets. If they go down the business isn't going to operate at the same level or pace so it impacts everything you do.
Days before Black Friday a large financial company in US had their system crash. Prognosis quickly identified the golden nugget that delivered the answer to the root cause and why it crashed. However unfortunately they were in freeze mode and couldn't apply necessary patches to fix the problem entirely. Plan B came into action and instead with Prognosis they were able to implement an early warning system; threshold alerts, so they knew when these thresholds were met the next thing was about to happen would be a crash. They could then act prior to any crash so they were able to sail through the peak sale season without any problems. When out of their freeze mode they applied the necessary upgrades and patches to their system. So it did have a happy ending but had they not been able to find the nugget quickly it could have been a much bleaker outcome.