10 tips to be the analytics consulting agency your boss wants to hire

10 tips to be the analytics consulting agency your boss wants to hire

• 1.
  To be theAgency Your Boss Wants to Hire 10Tips For AnalyticsTeams
• 2.
  To help ourcompanies adopt and transform into an analytics driven culture from the inside-out. Opportunity As with any consultant, we seek to leverage our experience and area of expertise to help our business partners mature. As internal consultants however, we are naturally married to their success!
• 3.
  A perceived willingness(if not desire!) of leadership to listen to external consultants more than internal experts. Challenge Often our perception is that our executives are hanging on every word external consultants are saying, yet they ignored us when we said the same thing!
• 4.
  BE THE AGENCYYOURBOSS WANTS TO HIRE! Solution
• 5.
  An external agencywould be dealing directly with your executives - why aren’t you? Tip #1 –Take aTop Down Approach External agencies are coming in under a statement of work; usually sponsored by an executive and almost always outlining the need for access to executives to successfully execute on their deliverables. They understand the need for executive support to achieve success, and so should all internal consultant organizations! Find a way to get time on your executives calendar and use your time wisely!
• 6.
  “I’ve spent alot of money and hired a lot of people, and I still don’t have the data I need. I’m not where I thought we would be” Tip #2 – See the Executive Perspective Agencies hear this point all the time from executives and come into meetings with them laser focused on this point, and so should we. Appealing to this perspective and not getting caught up “in the weeds” is the key to being relatable and building up your executive’s confidence in you and your solutions. P.S. – Be solution oriented! External agencies don’t waste time talking about how we got here, neither should we.
• 7.
  Be able toarticulate what success looks like and have a plan/approach for getting there Tip #3 – Have aVision of Success This is the bread and butter of the external agencies: being able to inspire leaders to believe in what is possible and the thoughtful, logical approach to getting the organization there. Be passionate, and use case studies to inspire and motivate your executives – Make them relevant, real, and achievable!
• 8.
  Have examples ofwhere you have achieved success and use them to build credibility. Tip #4 – Build Credibility via Success Every Agency has a “NASCAR” slide of the companies they’ve successfully helped, where’s yours? Even if the wins are small in scale or achieved through Proof of Concept work, talk about the impact the work had, and how much larger the impact could be if scaled up through greater support for your plan.
• 9.
  Rebrand your team,effort, program, initiative, etc.. Tip #5 – Rebrand Every Agency has a cool inspirational brand that inspires customers and connects employees to the mission, what’s yours? Think about the journey your team is on, the goal of your work, the solution you seek, and unite it to your brand.
• 10.
  Spend time upfront to consult with your executive team on what their goals and applications for analytics are. Tip #6 – Start with Data Program Goals Agencies conduct “Reference Interviews” at the start of an engagement to guide executives on what decisions data and analytics could (and should) be informing for them and what will be needed to achieve that aspirational goal. Establishing these goals from the beginning will ensure that your program is set up for successful outcomes and aligned for support from the start.
• 11.
  Create an AnalyticsMaturity Model and be prepared to perform a diagnostic Maturity Assessment of the organization Tip #7 – Perform Maturity Assessments Let’s acknowledge that there is going to be a lot of areas of opportunities in your plan for the executives to consume. External Agencies use Maturity Assessments to create a framework for executives to wrap their mind’s around the problem and create areas of focus and establish a baseline for measuring progress… and we should too.
• 12.
  Consider a processfor prioritization, execution, and even billing of your work. Tip #8 – ManageYour Portfolio ofWork Ok, so you’re not really an agency, but reviewing this quarterly with your executive and comparing with the plan to mature, can/will reveal where tactical requests are at odds with strategic progress and help you partner to address the issues. It is now after all,THEIR goals these requests are preventing from being achieved!
• 13.
  Use education sessionsand roadshows to help transformation and build organizational awareness of your team’s brand. Tip #9 – Use Education and Roadshows View them as the internal equivalent of digital marketing conferences: an opportunity to sell your vision and brand as an internal agency and build support.
• 14.
  When you achievewins, make time to tell the story to you sponsors, stakeholders, business and IT partners, and anyone involved. Tip #10 – Sell your Successes Nothings sells future agency engagements like success!
• 15.
  Some additional conversationspawned around “next time”: If you interview for a new role, why not treat it as an Agency Statement of Work? Interview the company/hiring manager for its willingness to support and adhere to the plan that you’ve laid out to achieve their desired goals/outcomes for the role. If they love it and you’re hired, hold them to their end of the bargain like a contract. If they hate it, were they a good fit to begin with? So maybe it’s better to get that out of the way up front FinalThoughts