Launching a self-service analytics programme (part 1)
Back in February I was asked to share my Tableau story at their Tableau Cinema Tour series in London. My Tableau story is a long one — how do I pick one thing to talk about with other customers?
Most of my previous talks have been about Tableau Server. It’s not really something that an audience of 250 people are going to stay awake through. Tableau helped me narrow down the topic by giving me three things to discuss.
- Your challenge
- Your solution
- Your success with Tableau
I decided to share my story about how we launched a self service analytics programme using Tableau. My story took shape after several iterations and feedback from the Tableau team (Max Ridley). The feedback that I have received has been amazing. So many people have commented and contacted me, thanking me for sharing my story.
There has also been lots of questions and interest in this. How did I do it? What were the barriers? How can we do something similar? Can I have your slides?
I figured that I needed to give a bit more detail into how this programme came about, why I did it, and how it can add value. Also I wanted to share my thoughts on why I feel it's important for all businesses to consider something which can put data in the hands of people who need it.
Background
Just Eat have been using Tableau for around five years. I’ve been managing the Tableau Server for over two and a half years, and have helped deliver an increase in users from 600 per month to now over 1500.
My presentation told the story about how we, as a BI team were not able to deliver data and insight to an organisation in the time frames which was expected.
After feedback and an internal survey we realised we needed to develop a new strategy to get insight and data into the hands of the business, fast.
Launching “self service analytics”
Our solution, create a variety of tables from our database which could form the platform for answering the daily questions from the business.
These “daily questions” were the requests slowing the team down from delivering critical analysis. Daily interruptions and favours. Walk ups and emails. Time consuming and distracting, most of the time with little business value other than giving someone a number.
These data tables were created and published onto Tableau Server, limiting the impact to the database as well as controlling the data viewed and accessed by non technical users.
So Tableau provided the platform for creating and curating these data sources and exposing the data to the business without having to provide database access.
Other businesses would have a different set of “core” information. For us this centred around transactions. Orders being placed with our Restaurants by our Customers.
The team interviewed different stakeholders about what information they needed and factored that in to the building of the data tables. More on this later.
So once our data had been created, the next step was to train business uses how to understand the data they were looking at. The programme I launched was branded “DataChefs”.
Building a training programme
This was a bit of an unknown for me. I had previously shown people how to use Tableau or do certain things 1–2–1, but never taken a group of new users from nothing to competent. Where to start?
My first place was to reach out to my Tableau account management team. Lots of other customers had already done similar things so the Tableau team had some good tips.
My keys learnings:
- Find the right participants / audience level (beginner, intermediate, advanced)
- Mix up the training sessions (hands on or theory or both)
- Identify the core functionality you want to training to deliver (parameters?)
- Allocate enough time to prepare your content
- Leverage the Tableau community!
I am often asked about the effort required for this style of programme. My answer and also Andy Cotgreve’s favourite response “it depends”.
How much do you want your programme to succeed?
Do you want participants to be engaged and open new possibilities to them through the world of data?
Do you want to drive data culture within your organisation?
Hopefully your answers are along the lines of “big success”, “yes-empower people with data” and “yes-bring on the data revolution”, then my answer is as much effort as you can possibly put into it.
From the start of this project I believe I spent six weeks working on preparing the course material. The course is six weeks long, sessions are once a week for two hours. Six weeks of preparation might sound like a lot. Here is just a example of what needs to be done if you want to launch a successful programme.
- Establish your goals — I want to take complete new people to data and give them the skills to be able to understand the data and use Tableau proficiently to answer a variety of business questions, with minimal support. Don’t forget sign off/approval from senior sponsor. Why are you doing this in the first place
- Prepare a checklist for logistically hosting and conducting training (you have no idea how hard it is to find meeting rooms for 2hrs)
- Identify a curriculum — what are the topics you want to deliver training on?
- Build your material for the session. For me this was a course outline document, slides for training and a Tableau workbook with examples and exercises
- Review and test — checking for errors, flow and progression. You don’t want to jump from basic to advanced techniques being taught. The level of progression needs to be just right
- Selecting participants — finding the right people to train. You are investing your time, you don’t want time wasters. You want enthusiastic people looking to learn and add value to your business
I’m not suggesting six weeks is the perfect time to build out and launch a programme. It depends on your goals. It could be a much shorter rapid onboard style programme. Or a more intense longer business embedding programme.
For me it felt like the topics I wanted to cover could be delivered in that time (6 weeks). I wanted to ensure I kept people engaged (2hr session) but not annoy or impact the business units by taking their staff away for days on end.
That is why I felt it was important to identify my goal for the programme at the beginning. If someone already has some experience in Tableau I tend to explain to them this course is aimed at beginners and we have other ways for them to improve.
Keeping the group at a similar level makes it easier for you to train and for them to help each other. People who may get stuck don’t feel stupid and scared to ask for help. Its never nice to feel like that and one of the added benefits of this has been the confidence gained from people given this opportunity.
Part 2 - I will go into more detail about my specific topics and what I am teaching in these and why.
Good luck for anyone looking to launch a self service analytics programme. If you have any questions, I’m happy to have a chat.
Cheers
Kris.
