Think about a time you had a bold question at work—one that you knew getting the answer to would positively impact your company.
Did you know where to go to find the answer? How did you dig up—and make sense of—the information? Did the information give you the confidence to make a decision or act on what you found?
For Ben Schein, Domo’s Senior Vice President of Product, this is the difference between a rigid business intelligence report and an exceptional data experience. Accessible, agile, impactful data experiences are what it takes to enable people to be curious, look for answers to tough questions, and take steps—quickly and confidently—to help the business.
With a data experience platform available to everyone in your organization, people go from being occasional data observers to business impact owners who can access—and act on—data at the right time.
We sat down with Ben for a chat about how data experiences boost people’s ability to make an impact—and how a company’s ability to access and act on data influences everything from culture to outcomes.
What’s going on in the world of work—what challenges are leaders tackling?
Ben: Domo conducted a study to understand how workers use technology, and we saw an emerging trend of sleepworking (sleepworking is the inability for employees to perform at their full potential due to a lack of technology and strategic data). People aren’t sleepworking because they don’t care or because they don’t have enough technology; they’re sleepworking because they have too many tools and too much technology to even know where to begin.
Tools need to fit into this complicated ecosystem and reduce noise—not increase it. When people see yet another tool, they may get excited and experiment with it a bit. But if it feels like “just another tool” and doesn’t improve their work life, then they may ditch the tool and go back to what they’re used to.
If we want to break through sleepworking, we need to create a new dynamic for how data is used in day-to-day jobs. Data needs to be a great experience.
What’s the single most important thing companies should prioritize?
Ben: If we’ve learned anything over the last few years, it’s that we don’t know what will happen in our crazy world. So, my advice is to focus on agility and the ability to adapt to change.
If you build tools or data in a rigid manner, you might get lucky and be OK for a few months. But eventually (sooner than you think), things will shift again, and you will be stuck with a rigid ecosystem.
I often talk about the idea of building end-to-almost-end instead of end-to-end. This means leaving flexibility at the end of the data journey so you can respond to change.
What is a great data experience—and why does it matter?
Ben: A great data experience is built on relevant data, delivered when and where you need it. Let’s unpack this.
Relevant data is the foundation of a great data experience. This means having enough data to go into details that are relevant, but also filtering down to more specific data that meets security requirements—like Shauna in sales can only dig into the data for the region she is working in.
Relevant data is only helpful if it’s delivered when and where you need it. Knowing about something one week after you can do something about it isn’t helpful. The speed of data-to-insight needs to align with the speed of your business. If you’re working on the factory floor, you need access to relevant data on your mobile device, not a laptop. And it better be quick and easy to find.
Great data experiences also consider the unique needs and skills of the person consuming the data experience. They empower everyone regardless of their fluency with data— relevant data may be in a simple chart for a field worker and explored in Jupyter for a data scientist.
Domo is a data experience platform—what results are customers achieving with it?
Ben: There’s something magical about seeing a customer unlock value with a Domo data experience. The most powerful examples are when the new experience can cut a lot of manual work. I have seen examples where thousands of hours a week of extra work were eliminated. Field offices would have to compile data every week, send it to headquarters, and then people at HQ would spend time compiling all the data.
When you automate data, you free up hours of time in the field and at HQ—and have more real-time visibility into what is going on in your business. This pattern has been repeated over and over for Domo customers.
Even more exciting is when a data experience unlocks new data that’s never been used before. Sometimes people didn’t know the data existed or it was too hard to access or understand. When data is properly unlocked for a business user, there are whole new worlds of understanding and business impact in front of you. I’ve seen this happen with sentiment analytics from social or internal sources. Teams are going deeper into data than summarized reporting tables or just exposing data that had not been analyzed together.
As a product leader and innovator, what’s your vision for Domo?
Ben: I’ve been thinking a lot about reducing friction. Our goal at Domo is to make data work for everyone in an organization so they can multiply their business impact. I look to reduce the friction that exists for our users to have this impact. That friction can exist in many forms, including the ability to:
- Expose new data
- Drive action with data
- Find and use what data is available
- Extend your impact by sharing with others
Our innovation focuses on removing friction points. Modern tech like Chat GPT, natural language query, and knowledge graphs will help us remove friction on the path to business impact.
Multiply Your Impact with Exceptional Data Experiences
Exceptional data experiences ensure that the most relevant, actionable data gets to your team. Access and ease of use encourages a culture of curiosity because people finally feel like they can get answers to questions (and act on them). With a data experience platform, you’re laying the foundation for everyone to use data to achieve their best results.
Dig into hew data experiences put data to work for everyone across the business by checking out these resources:
• How to get a data experience platform launched for your company
• Why customers choose Domo and the profound impact they’re making