The Secrete Sauce: Three questions I ask every client
Hi,
My clients are pack rats.
They hoard everything.
Data, testimonials, user feedback.
And that's ok. To an extent.
Hoarding your testimonials and user feedback is one thing. Probably a good thing.
Hoarding your data is not.
Especially not if it is personal data.
I've worked with organisations collecting data as far back as they are old. And they were old.
But why?
Are you really going to run a year over year analysis going back 20 years?
Are you going to run it going back 5 years?
I have yet to see a team run a YoY analysis that went back more than a year or two. Nor have I met a team that makes decisions on that data, real decisions that affect the bottom line. They just look back, see how well they have been doing, and pat themselves on the back.
You don't need all that data.
More importantly that data is putting your business at risk the longer you keep it.
When (if?) you are breached, the data you hang on to, is all data that could be accessed. Data that could be exposed to the wrong people. Data you will need to tell your customers might have gotten into the wrong hands.
It's not easy letting go of things.
Keeping all that data is like a safety blanket - you have something you could use at some point if you need it.
It's there to cover for what you might have forgotten to collect and suddenly realise you need.
It's your fall back.
So of course it won't be easy getting rid of it. Even harder is not collecting it at all. Not collecting it requires that you are confident in what you need for the future. It requires strategy. It requires thought. It requires understanding.
But we won't get into the whole strategy bit today. Instead let's start the way I start with most of my clients.
When working with my pack-rat data-hoarding clients I start with three questions:
🤓 What?
🤓 Why?
🤓 For how long?
What data are you processing?
Do you know?
Do you have clarity as to what data you are collecting and processing?
If you don't know what data you are handling you are stuck with figuring it out.
Create a data flow map to understand what you are collecting, how you are modelling it, and where it is going.
Understand what is required by each department and what each of their success KPIs are.
Understand what is non-negotiable and what data is there "just-in-case".
Without this clarity you can't move on.
Without this clarity you can't be data driven.
Without this clarity your data is useless.
Why are you processing the data?
Your data needs a purpose - why else would you be stuffing it into all corners of the building?
Your data needs to drive a decision. It needs to have action attached to it. It needs goal posts.
If you don't have a purpose why bother collecting it? To put your customers data at risk?
Look at all your data and see what decisions it drives.
Draw a clear connection between your data, the expected forecast of the metric, and what outcome that metric, against the forecast, will drive.
Any data that does not have a purpose and clear action related to it is not necessary.
Do you need it for bug detection?
Do you need it for the optimisation team experiment?
Does sales determine their success on it?
Does marketing require it to determine future campaigns?
Does the product team need to understand the product flow better for improvements?
You need a purpose to be collecting it. Not a purpose that might appear a few months or years later.
What data will drive decision now or at a specific time in the future?
You'd be surprised how little that is for most of my clients.
You'd be even more surprised how happy the data team is once they realise they can have cleaner and more reliable data sets.
For how long are you keeping that data?
Forget about the costs you are incurring storing all that data and the inventible mess of the data you are working with.
Let's focus only on the customer (and employee) consequences.
Their data will get into the wrong hands.
Before it does it is your job to get rid of it, safely.
Don't get me wrong - not all data can be deleted at a moments notice and some you may need to keep for 5, 7, even 10 years for various other legal reasons. But the rest can go.
What about the emails, names, and company names you collected for that, now irrelevant, white paper?
For how long do you need to keep transaction information?
How long has it been since you cleaned up your email list?
Do yourself a favour and question why you are storing something and for how long you really need it.
When you figure out that number set up an automatic deletion schedule to delete or anonymise the data that should be deleted.
It's just three questions.
It's not easy.
My clients hate it - especially the deletion bit (the rest they think of more as a chore).
But once it's all done it's a relief knowing that they have done all they can do keep their customers data out of the wrong hands incase of a breach.
Relieved that they can do that and still have the data they need to make business decisions that drive growth.
Relieved that they didn't have to just get rid of it all.
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