[00:00:07] Lauren Burke: Welcome back to Women in Analytics After Hours, the podcast where we hang out and learn with the WIA Community. This is our first episode of our new series, Five Minute Feature, where we highlight impactful projects, use cases, and innovations in five minutes or less.
Today we'll hear from Jen Tedrow, Executive Director at Pathfinder Product, a Test Double operation. Who's joining us to share about the recently published The State of Data as a Product in the Real World Study.
So thanks for joining us, Jen. And I'm going to turn it over to you now.
[00:00:42] Jen Tedrow: Thanks so much, Lauren. Thanks for having me here. Um, happy to talk about the study. I'm going to go through the goals of the study first.
We, when we started the goal of this effort was really to uncover if and how companies were leveraging Data as a Product, um, as a mindset. There've been really a lot of buzz around Data as a Product, but I was really curious about the real world application of this mindset.
Um, there's no shortage of data that points to the benefits of having a data driven organization and a Data as a Product mindset. For example, research by McKinsey indicates that data driven organizations are 23 times more likely to acquire customers, six times as likely to retain customers, and 19 times more likely to be profitable.
And other studies have shown things like effectively leveraging data can lead to reduced costs and increased customer satisfaction and provide a significant competitive advantage. Um, but despite all of the evidence of these benefits, we noticed through not just experience, but also a lot of conversations with folks that it's often a challenge for organizations to fully realize the potential and value of their data. And there's a lot of reasons for that. And they're often broader than just challenges with finding things like the right tooling or technical solution. Though that's certainly part of it.
Uh, we've seen things like cultural and organizational challenges, struggles with demonstrating ROI and strategic alignment issues that can hinder progress and value realization when it comes to data. So we wanted to explore those challenges and better understand them and hopefully help shed some light on where organizations could focus efforts to achieving some really, truly amazing outcomes with their data.
And when we were looking at the approach for this, um, it was funny because I was actually looking for something like this study when I was preparing to be a panelist at DataConnect, uh, in 2023, on the topic of Data as a Product.
And when I realized that a study on this topic just didn't exist, I thought, well, maybe I could do it. Um, I mentioned the idea to, uh, Ben Blanquera at the conference and he suggested a partnership with Women in Analytics and it all just made sense. So, um, we started with interviewing several data experts to inform our survey design and then opened up a survey for a few weeks and targeted data and product leaders, practitioners and even data stakeholders.
And we work together to analyze the results and determine the best way to reflect back the insights. Um, and I was lucky enough to work with you, Lauren, on that. And I love the collaborative nature of this process working with you because your perspective as a data scientist. was so incredibly helpful.
And one of the things that you were very, um, firm on that I loved was making the findings actionable. And our approach for doing so was to segment the findings by persona to provide additional nuanced understanding. So while we do provide the overall findings, obviously, there's a lot more to glean when we represent the findings through the lens of leaders, practitioners, decision makers, and stakeholders.
Um, we also introduced a concept that we're calling the Data as a Product Fundamentals which are mentality enablers and tactics. Which we found to be really helpful for folks to grasp the concept of Data as a Product.
Some of the insights from the study that were really interesting were that, um, 81 percent of the respondents did report that treating data as a valuable and usable asset had positive impacts on their organizations. Um, we also asked about the top three use cases for data. Uh, and they were to inform strategic decision making, improve operational efficiency, and enhance customer service. One of the things that surprised me was that the bottom three use cases that were reported for data from our respondents were machine learning, artificial intelligence and data monetization. That was a little surprising to me.
Um, and the top three challenges that we found when implementing data as a product strategy was integrating data products into existing workflows and systems and ensuring data quality and reliability and aligning data products with business value and goals. Um, there's a lot more in there to unpack.
It's all in the study. It's pretty comprehensive. The study can be found at pathfinderproduct.com/DAAP if you'd like to download and check out the full results. And really, we did this, the impact that we hope to have was that we really hope that this will help organizations gain a greater understanding of Data as a Product and lead to improved understanding across different stakeholder groups. Uh, leveraging data as a product is an investment for organizations, but it's one that has a very high upside. We believe that companies that are forward thinking enough to do so will win and we want to help them win.
[00:05:43] Lauren Burke: Thank you, Jen. And thanks for tuning in. I hope you've enjoyed this five minute feature.
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