When was the last time a client asked you something that scared you? I’m not trying to send you to a dark place, but to many consultants I know, questions as mundane as “How did you calculate this number?” are the stuff of nightmares (or headaches, at least). Why is that?
Last week, I talked with a number of people who do data work for clients in consulting firms and agencies, and after each conversation, I’d wonder to myself: Why is it so scary for a client to ask a simple question about your data analysis?
It seems like a simple enough question to answer. But the sophistication of modern analysis can make retracing one’s steps difficult. To put it simply, there are many steps and many moving parts, and the connections between them fade or break with the passage of time.
For example, if a retailer asks you “How did you calculate the lifetime value of our customers?”, that’s a relatively easy question to answer if you have all the pieces in place (average order value, # of orders per year, etc.).
But what would you do if a client asked you this question and the lead analyst on this project can’t be reached?
Where the information loses fidelity is when those pieces are hard to find and ultimately result in having to recreate all of that prep work and analysis for answering a seemingly simple question.
If that analyst has moved on to another project, you’ve lost access to his or her tacit knowledge gained while building complex queries, working with messy data in multiple formats, and learning lessons that never got written down.
Wouldn’t you like to avoid another moment where a simple question makes you scratch your head and forces you to do the same work all over again?
This phenomenon is why more consultancies and agencies, big and small, are making their clients happier and their lives much easier by using data.world.
You can use our data distribution capabilities to provide data with its metadata to clients in a project, where stakeholders of all data literacy levels can collaborate through discussions that populate their activity feeds.
No need to keep emailing spreadsheets and notebooks when you and your clients can accomplish your goals in a workspace alongside the data.
And last, but not least, you can sleep soundly at night when you have all your data project information in a singular location where you can easily pick up the work where you left off, and quickly find answers to your clients questions that pop up a year from now.
If you’re curious about how other consulting firms and agencies use data.world, visit our site.
