Data 3.0
I’m in my mid 50s now, which means I’m in that stage of life where I’m highly focussed on health. I want to live not only a long life, but also a healthy life.
One of the books I’ve been re-reading is the excellent Outlive by Peter Attia.
If you’ve read it you’ll recall he discusses the topic of Medicine 3.0.
As a quick oversimplification:
- Medicine 1.0 was the initial medical approach a century ago, starting to identify issues (eg diseases and ailments).
- Medicine 2.0 is about treating the conditions (eg treating cancer).
- Medicine 3.0 is about preventing issues (eg preventing cancer).
It seems obvious that we should be preventing health issues, yet spend a moment thinking through your typical medical experience (eg visiting the doctor or a hospital) and it will mostly be about treating an issue. That’s Medicine 2.0.
The focus for longer and better health is all around Medicine 3.0 – preventing health issues before they even start.
Let’s turn our attention to business now.
I’ve been reflecting on what a number of our clients are focussing on lately. In many cases it is about preventing future issues.
Often it’s around how they work with data (ie their company lifeblood if you will).
There’s parallels with Medicine 3.0, which I’ll refer to as Data 3.0
We could say that:
- Data 1.0 is the initial ingesting of data – just get it into a system (eg spreadsheet, CRM, database, Inbox) somehow.
- Data 2.0 is the cleaning up of data – treating the issues of data duplication, corruption, missing items etc.
- Data 3.0 is the proactive processes with data that ensure it is going to be useful in the future.
What’s new about this?
Data confidence (or data quality, or data integrity, or however you want to refer to it) isn’t a new topic of course. Everyone wants reliable data in their CRM.
Yet, many of the data quality projects we’ve been working on over the past years have been solely about ‘fixing’ data.
However, what we’re seeing lately, especially in the bigger, more strategic, companies, is a focus on putting proactive, preventative processes in place to ensure data is reliable.
Some examples:
- A HubSpot to SAP project – at first this seemed like an integration project. But the integration piece isn’t the time consuming part. Instead this company is spending (significant) time analysing business processes and streamlining sales processes to ensure contact and deal data is correct and complete, long before it ever gets sent anywhere outside of HubSpot.
- Multiple NetSuite projects – again, these present initially as integration projects, but the details are all focussed on data protection – ensuring any data entered or updated is carefully guided. This is from both sides (both in HubSpot for the sales and marketing, and in NetSuite for the financial data)
- We also have clients who are a hybrid – they are fixing data issues, but spending the time to ensure the cause is understood (and corrected). Examples include contact and deal data coming from WooCommerce and Zapier integrations – we have two clients currently with this issue. Sometimes it feels like ‘whac-a-mole’ fixing one issue and then uncovering another, but the end outcome is a system that provides reliable data downstream (for more targeted marketing, and better forecasting)
These are the boring, but strategically impactful, projects that will pay off for these companies in the coming years.
They understand the value of reliable data, and have the budgets to put the ‘boring’ processes in place now.
When I reflect on these companies I can see they are going to be long term players – they are setting the data foundations for long term success.
But what are the specific benefits?
Whilst intuitively we know reliable data is a good thing (right?), it’s worth considering what the specific value of these projects will be – after all how do these ‘expensive’ projects get approved by the CFO?
One example: For the SAP project, their process excellence team has identified one of the key benefits is that they can shorten payment cycles. For a company with millions in monthly billings, even just bringing payments forward by a day has significant impact. Imagine shortening by a week… These kinds of changes can be transformative. And it all starts with data.
Another example: For NetSuite projects, one key benefit of associating sales and marketing data (HubSpot) with financial data (NetSuite) is the ability to accurately segment companies for better marketing. Deal data is the start, but confirmed financial data is the full 360 view.
The ‘privilege’ of reliable data?
A final observation though.
Thinking back to health and Medicine 3.0 I’m aware that prevention is actually a privilege. In a cost of living crisis, with many people working two jobs to make ends meet, it can be hard to be proactive – just getting through the week is challenging enough – let alone proactively working on health.
So too with many businesses. The day-to-day of putting out fires doesn’t leave much time for proactive data improvement.
Sometimes it feels like cleaning up data is something only the bigger companies with deep pockets can do…
Getting proactive about your data
There’s definitely some truth to this, but there are simple ways we can all start down this path:
- Firstly, just by considering the topic (if you haven’t before today), you’re making a start…
- Second, make it a conscious habit that any time you consider changing a sales pipeline process, or add another property to a contact screen, you think through the future implications: do we really need this new property?
- Third, consider permissions that users get by default – many of our proactive clients have ‘locked down’ their systems so that well meaning users can’t go adding in new properties, changing layouts, importing data and creating confusing workflows.
- Fourth, regularly review old properties and archive (or delete) them if they are no longer needed
- Fifth, remind yourself that making a process simpler is the hallmark of expertise (and adding complexity is often the hallmark of overpriced consultants). What can you simplify today?
- Sixth, ensure you are tracking activities automatically (emails, meetings, calls, tasks) eg in Stage 1 of the HubShots Framework, the focus is on getting the basics of good data tracking in place. Too often we see custom properties and processes being added that could be handled by out-of-the-box features already in HubSpot.
- Finally, a reminder that getting the basics in place (eg sometimes a training refresher is all that’s needed) is usually much more impactful than chasing all the shiny new features (eg getting distracted with the latest lead scoring tools when the basic data isn’t even being added)
Sometimes less is more.
