Each one in their squad: How does data help break down barriers between areas?
Posted: Sun Dec 22, 2024 8:50 am
Dividing teams into squads within a company to have people dedicated to specific issues and gain more agility in operations makes perfect sense. However, this division should not create walls between teams or cause indicators to be shared only between each area.
What often happens is that because a group becomes so focused and dedicated, the bond that existed with other teams becomes weakened. We notice this especially when we talk about structured data vision.
Let's understand how we can improve the results of any company by investing in the integration of areas through data collection and strategic dashboards.
Keeping an eye on the company's goals and objectives
To better illustrate the issue, let's use this concept as an example of a University and, in a simplified way, think about how this structure would be applied to reality.
In a higher education institution, we have acquisition, conversion, student relations, retention, marketing and code number of philippines advertising teams , among many others. Of course, the company's overall goal is the same: to attract and retain as many students as possible. However, each team has its own operational indicators – and they often remain in a specific “square”.
If each squad only looks at their square…
For example, the Acquisition team is responsible for designing strategies focused on student enrollment. The Marketing and Advertising team is responsible for creating creative campaigns and managing investments in paid media for greater efficiency and better cost (it does not necessarily need to generate savings, but rather a way to achieve the best results, optimizing investments). And on the “other side of the floor” is the student relations team, responsible for all communication and connections between students and the institution, and whose goal is to increase engagement with classes and academic programs.
Difficulties begin to appear when there is no interaction between these teams . Each employee needs to understand that the union of areas generates positive results and brings them closer to the company's overall goal, proving that goals are thought out and calculated based on joint efforts.
Returning to the example, if there is no such interaction, the acquisition team will not be concerned with knowing the real cost of each student who occupied the classroom. In turn, the student relations team will not provide any insight into behavior and profile that could contribute to the media strategy. Going further, the retention team will find it difficult to remedy requests for cancellation of enrollment, without realizing that perhaps some of the dropouts were already destined to abandon the course because they are not part of the university's target audience.
Yes, this happens more often than we think!
The vision of a strategic manager
When we start to seek an executive view of the main indicators, it doesn't matter which squad is responsible for the data in question or whether each of them will be collected from a different team . Either way, these numbers need to be tied together in a coherent way to allow for a structured view that actually provides answers.
And it is at this moment that the (wonderful) possibility arises of being inspired by operational indicators and metrics from the team on a different floor, or from the room next door, and discovering that structured data from this other area can help in designing a much more robust and assertive strategy.
Assertiveness with data collection and mining
Finally, let's go back to the university example. If we understand that a marketing campaign with appeal X eventually brings in fewer students than a campaign with appeal Y , but that these students are more committed to classes, have better grades and are in a higher percentage of the group that pays their tuition on time (information that can be obtained from other teams), we can use this insight, based on specific data, to say which campaigns give the best return in the medium/long term.
Furthermore, through data analysis, we can calculate the ROI of the campaigns and actions carried out . In this case, we can measure and compare whether the cost of firing a “cannon shot” (with the aim of reaching the largest number of people) is too high and whether it ends up converting students who do not fit the university profile, who request to close their enrollment in less than 1 year of the course. If this is the case, it will be clear that this investment will need to be reviewed.
The answer is not to turn a blind eye and completely abandon other ideas for making decisions . The great advantage of aligning yourself with data is understanding which data can be stitched together in each squad – regardless of which team/floor/room they belong to – and thus obtain a strategic view of your business and allow you to build a dashboard or report without leaving gaps along the way.
What often happens is that because a group becomes so focused and dedicated, the bond that existed with other teams becomes weakened. We notice this especially when we talk about structured data vision.
Let's understand how we can improve the results of any company by investing in the integration of areas through data collection and strategic dashboards.
Keeping an eye on the company's goals and objectives
To better illustrate the issue, let's use this concept as an example of a University and, in a simplified way, think about how this structure would be applied to reality.
In a higher education institution, we have acquisition, conversion, student relations, retention, marketing and code number of philippines advertising teams , among many others. Of course, the company's overall goal is the same: to attract and retain as many students as possible. However, each team has its own operational indicators – and they often remain in a specific “square”.
If each squad only looks at their square…
For example, the Acquisition team is responsible for designing strategies focused on student enrollment. The Marketing and Advertising team is responsible for creating creative campaigns and managing investments in paid media for greater efficiency and better cost (it does not necessarily need to generate savings, but rather a way to achieve the best results, optimizing investments). And on the “other side of the floor” is the student relations team, responsible for all communication and connections between students and the institution, and whose goal is to increase engagement with classes and academic programs.
Difficulties begin to appear when there is no interaction between these teams . Each employee needs to understand that the union of areas generates positive results and brings them closer to the company's overall goal, proving that goals are thought out and calculated based on joint efforts.
Returning to the example, if there is no such interaction, the acquisition team will not be concerned with knowing the real cost of each student who occupied the classroom. In turn, the student relations team will not provide any insight into behavior and profile that could contribute to the media strategy. Going further, the retention team will find it difficult to remedy requests for cancellation of enrollment, without realizing that perhaps some of the dropouts were already destined to abandon the course because they are not part of the university's target audience.
Yes, this happens more often than we think!
The vision of a strategic manager
When we start to seek an executive view of the main indicators, it doesn't matter which squad is responsible for the data in question or whether each of them will be collected from a different team . Either way, these numbers need to be tied together in a coherent way to allow for a structured view that actually provides answers.
And it is at this moment that the (wonderful) possibility arises of being inspired by operational indicators and metrics from the team on a different floor, or from the room next door, and discovering that structured data from this other area can help in designing a much more robust and assertive strategy.
Assertiveness with data collection and mining
Finally, let's go back to the university example. If we understand that a marketing campaign with appeal X eventually brings in fewer students than a campaign with appeal Y , but that these students are more committed to classes, have better grades and are in a higher percentage of the group that pays their tuition on time (information that can be obtained from other teams), we can use this insight, based on specific data, to say which campaigns give the best return in the medium/long term.
Furthermore, through data analysis, we can calculate the ROI of the campaigns and actions carried out . In this case, we can measure and compare whether the cost of firing a “cannon shot” (with the aim of reaching the largest number of people) is too high and whether it ends up converting students who do not fit the university profile, who request to close their enrollment in less than 1 year of the course. If this is the case, it will be clear that this investment will need to be reviewed.
The answer is not to turn a blind eye and completely abandon other ideas for making decisions . The great advantage of aligning yourself with data is understanding which data can be stitched together in each squad – regardless of which team/floor/room they belong to – and thus obtain a strategic view of your business and allow you to build a dashboard or report without leaving gaps along the way.