Data Champions: The Secret Ingredient to Upskilling in Data-Driven Organizations

Business data is key to the operational performance of any company. However, it takes more than just one individual to ensure that the right data is gathered, translated, and optimized. Rather than recruiting new data-oriented workers, more and more companies have now pivoted to upskilling as a means to create a data culture. 

As a part of DataCamp's RADAR conference, Alina Georgescu, Head of Sales Enablement at DataCamp, moderated the session “Building Data Champions at Gulf Bank: Scaling Internal Data Talent Flows” featuring Mai AlOwaish, Chief Data Officer at Gulf Bank. AlOwaish introduced us to the idea of data champions and explained how Gulf Bank cultivates a data culture at the company. 

In the post, we recap AlOwaish’s session, in which she shared insights from her experience and gave essential advice for generating a data culture at your company.

What Makes a Data-Driven Organization? The story of Two Different Marketing Teams

Not everyone who looks at data is data-driven, AlOwaish argued through her story of two marketing teams who have to navigate plummeting purchases five days into a marketing campaign. 

Team A, which only looked at last year’s data, decided to halt the campaign and reassign the budget to another well-performing campaign. While they think they’re making a data-driven decision, they were only looking at static data and thus missed some vital clues.

Team B instead studies the data more scrupulously, including real-time data, and continues the campaign, noticing an uptick in memberships and an increase in non-campaign purchases. By looking at metrics beyond what they received in a report like Team A did, Team B is able to make a truly data-driven decision, leading to improved results.  

“We need to empower teams to really self-serve with analytics,” said Mai, who deemed Team B more data-driven than its counterpart. She believes teams should be able to explore new ideas on an ad hoc basis, experiment and play with data, and navigate the data for the best, intended use. For that to happen, though, the key ingredient is a data culture. 

How do you develop a data culture? According to AlOwaish, a data culture can be built from within the organization, starting with a champion network that evangelizes the importance of making data-driven decisions. Once that champion network has been forged and established, an organization and then start rolling out an enterprise data literacy program. 

How a Network of Data Champions Forged a Data Culture at Gulf Bank  

According to AlOwaish, there’s a recipe for building data champions, with all key ingredients being centered around community and skills. Here’s a breakdown of what these ingredients look like:

• Ensuring that the organization has a supportive structure for data champions, with executive and managerial support so that each department is embedded with data champions and experts who benefit the rest of the team.
• A learning curriculum set in place to enable champions to accelerate their skills—and accelerate the use of self-service analytics. 
• Incentives and community of practice to underscore the importance of upskilling—all centered around answering the key question of “What’s in it for me?”.  

After having established the champions network, the next challenge is rolling out a data literacy program for the remainder of the organization. As Mai exclaimed, data creators and consumers alike need to recognize the importance of data as an asset for everyone to succeed at Gulf Bank,