Magical Mystery Tour is a 1967 British made-for-television musical film written, produced, directed by, and starring the Beatles.
The movie, which has no real plot, tells a series of incidents, somewhere between the absurd and the grotesque, that happen to a group of characters (including Ringo, John, Paul and George themselves) during a bus journey in southern England, the itinerary of which is unknown to the passengers.
The same happens when you are talking about data collection and analytics.
Everyone wants data, no one knows how to read it
In the tech world, analytics is everything. And analytics is based on data.
“Data is the new oil.” – Clive Humby
Data is useless as long as it remains just data.
-
-
- Raw -> noise
- Sorted -> control
- Organized -> structure
- Visualized -> understanding
-
But it’s only at the final step that something happens: when you tell the story.
Because companies don’t make decisions based on numbers. They make them based on what they understand, and what they understand depends on how those numbers are:
-
-
- interpreted
- contextualized
- translated into a direction
-
All too often, I see companies full of dashboards, reports, and KPIs. And then no one makes a decision. Because the key step is missing: transforming data into a narrative that drives action:
-
-
- A data point says “what”
- A story explains “why”
- A strategy decides “what to do”
-
Without these steps, you remain stuck, but with beautiful charts.
Developing a strategy means taking a stand, even when it’s uncomfortable
User habits for companies are both an internal and an external relevant insight to understand.
It’s not only about how your products are performing (views, clicks, impressions, downloads, orders), but also how your team is performing.
Software vendors (AI providers included) are moving to tokenization and most firms have zero visibility into how their tokens are actually being used.
Just as an example: most recently a major design firm hired Goldman Sachs to analyze their token usage before an Autodesk renewal. They found that about $1.5 million of their spending was coming from user habit of opening AutoCAD in the morning, just to keep it open. No action on the platform.
What do you have to do in this situation?
Taking inspiration from Rob Gordon, the protagonist of the 1995 Nick Hornby novel High Fidelity (also became a 2000 romantic comedy-drama movie directed by Stephen Frears with Joan Cusack, Lisa Bonet and Jack Black) who was obsessed by compiling “Top 5” lists for every imaginable occasion, here below my top 5 actions:
-
-
- Cut out the options: if you try to keep all doors open, you’ll end up entering none of them.
- Talk only to trusted professionals and colleagues: talking to everyone is the same as talking to no one.
- Don’t overthink it: often, it’s just putting off a decision. It’s not research; it’s fear of deciding.
- Don’t try to please everyone: it doesn’t work; a true direction will upset someone, and that’s okay.
- Make a clear choice: growth starts there.
-
Show me the value (a.k.a. money)!
At the end of the day, there is only one value that people in business understand: money making or money saving.
We can talk forever about big numbers, how a brand is globally recognized, that data needs to be clean and focused, but the only thing that matters is ROI (Return of Investment).
We can discuss if ROI should be measured by time, productivity, easy access to information, products sold, and so on.
In the digital world, go out for money, it’s the only comet star to follow.
But let all be honest with ourselves and the bigger truth: when you are a manager, you want user data, when you are a user, you don’t want to share your data. Deal with it. Good luck.
—–
Stay data-hungry. Stay data-foolish.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Digital Consultant
