Can I trust that the data I use is correct?

All companies have some form of management information and many work according to KPIs. Behind these numbers are questions we ask daily, weekly and monthly. How much we earn, how much money we spend, etc. At the same time, we have more complex questions like:

• Why are we losing customers and what are the biggest drivers behind it?

• What is the optimal driving route for our drivers?

• Which products should we buy more of?

• And can I trust that the data I'm using is correct?

There are millions of Excel sheets out there trying to put together different numbers to provide good answers to these questions. Don't get me wrong, Excel is a great tool, but it's not particularly effective when complexity increases. Many people then sit on their private Excel sheets, with their own time series, formulas and graphs. They have built their own truth, while the colleague may have a slightly different one.

When they meet in the management meeting to make decisions, it is suddenly not so easy to agree.

Pål Werdenhoff heads the department for delivery management at Forte Digital.

Ask the right questions

To Working smarter with data, I would start by agreeing on what questions we are trying to get wise to. The questions dictate which data and sources you should focus on, which time series, and how we should calculate KPIs. This will be the truth you want everyone to relate to. The truth should be easily accessible and preferably effective to use when there is a lot of data or many people who want it.

Then the idea of a computer platform is often born. Yes, the investment seems large, but the dark figures around private Excel formulas, calculations, confusion about what is actually true and ineffective meetings and decisions, I think are greater. It is only hidden from us.

Build data platforms

Within salmon farming, which I have worked a lot with in recent years, there is now an increasing need to track how the salmon are doing throughout the value chain, from roe to slaughter, and provide operations managers, fish health managers and management with the necessary data basis to make good decisions. Here, it will not only be more efficient to go from Excel to something more structured, but absolutely necessary to be able to dive into complex biology questions and compare data from several years of operation.

Smart use of data starts with figuring out what questions you have. The questions lead you to what data you need to put together into one truth. You don't have to build a data platform to ask questions and get answers to them, but if you and your colleagues regularly need good answers and want tools to be better than the competition or optimize internally, I would at least consider whether there are better tools than Excel and gut feeling.