7 MADTechAI Best Practices

7 MADTechAI Best Practices

By William A. Lederer, Chairman and CEO, iSOCRATES®

MADTechAI tools help you make better business decisions and grow your revenues. However, to get the most out of the platform you choose, it’s crucial to follow best practices when selecting, implementing, and running a solution. Here’s what you need to know.

1. Data Integration, Consolidation & Management

Prior to implementing a new bi strategy, evaluate your current systems, and determine what areas need improvement. additionally, keep the following in mind when designing a new strategy:

• Which data source channels are essential to your reporting process?
• Identify your organization’s unique KPIs.

2. Data Security

Digital breaches are becoming more and more common, with 3.5 billion people having their personal data hacked in recent years. To protect your database from security threats, limit data access based on users’ requirements. Define a user’s privilege level based on their needs. Most people in your organization shouldn’t be able to manipulate data or get in-depth access to data sets.

3. Data Visualization

• Have different dashboard views for different people in the organization. Each stakeholder has their own needs, and the looks should reflect that. For example, senior management can get lost in the weeds, so roll up your data for specific attributes; this will simplify the data, giving management a big-picture overview.
• When designing bar charts that visualize one metric, make sure multiple colors aren’t used to avoid confusing viewers.
• While 3D visualizations look impressive, avoid them. The various tints and shades can add unnecessary colors. Additionally, 3D visualizations often hide crucial data from viewers.

4. Reporting & Alerts

We’re constantly flooded with data, so create alerts to ensure you don’t miss crucial data points and events, such as hitting your campaign pacing, conversion goals, falling below your revenue expectations, or exceeding your budget. Here are a couple of tips to ensure your alerts are effective:

• Set up alerts for both low and high thresholds. You want to know when you’re under- and over-performing
• Set up alerts to reach you via email and text message

5. Analytics

• When deciding which data points to include on your dashboards, focus on creating an organized summary—not a detailed report. In particular, show metrics like averages, totals, and rates
• Avoid long strings of digits. Instead, round your figures and metrics. However, keep in mind that finance teams may benefit from precise numbers

6. Data Science

It’s helpful to have data scientists work with your BI team. If possible, have the latter handle the operational analytics while the former refines your BI footprint and works to automate as many tasks as possible. This will ensure users get their work done quickly and accurately. Additionally, use data scientists to build models, forecast trends, find patterns in your data, and/or predict/proscribe the future.

7. Automation

Automated reporting should be built into your BI tools. For example, have the system generate reports every Friday highlighting what happened over the week.

Because BI provides a single repository of data, everyone in your organization will be able to analyze the same versions of the data and access reports without having to go to IT.

If you’re interested in learning more about MADTechAI best practices and how to choose the right platform for your needs, download our latest whitepaper.